It’s hard to believe that when Korean ceramicist Ahryun Lee started her career, her work was rooted in the Korean tradition. She was inspired by the iconic Moon Jars—the historical unadorned white porcelain vessels in the shape of waning moons—which embodied Confucian ideals, meant to bring a sense of purity and peace. Lee’s early, colorless work could not have been more different than what she creates today. Her most recent work is currently exhibited in a solo show entitled ‘Hoppy Marvels’ by J. Lohmann. The clay sculptures on display are whimsical, playful, and enriched with candy-like colors, signifying a journey of evolution.
Lee’s years as a student at the Department of Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art in London have instilled in her new ways of critical and theoretical thinking that has enabled her to advance her creativity through a wide range of new insights into working with clay. It was in London that she began to work in fresh ways with clay, ultimately developing a new identity in which the boundaries of the clay are pushed to new horizons, and fresh, personal methods and language are born. Today, Lee acknowledges that it was the teaching approach at the RCA—the cutting-edge, research-led processes that were transformative—that guided her to think of new imagery and to explore the complexities of the craft of clay, and the quest for fusing art and design. Emigrating from Korea led her to experiment, because she became exposed to contemporary ways of working with clay.
Currently based in Munich, Lee is working at her own studio where she creates non-functional sculptures in colored porcelain in the coiling hand-building method, then molds them into whimsical, fantastical, somewhat abstract animals with fascial expressions in various positions. It is her memories of childhood that became a source of inspiration. Each animal sculpture is covered with drips of colorful glazes that she inserts into the clay body using a medical syringe. Lee has an exquisite sense for color. In fact, she is a lover of colors, living with them and making them a part of her identity as an artist. She successfully brings together unexpected combinations of vibrant colors, which imbues the sculptures with a powerful presence; both individually and even more so when they are grouped together.
This body of work currently exhibited by J. Lohmann, signifies Lee’s identity as a ceramicist with her own personal vocabulary. Her pieces are humorous while standing on the line between the whimsical and the sincere, art and design, the minimal and the maximal, and the childish and the sincere, all while utilizing her own personal methods of working with clay. Walking into the gallery from the grayish cobblestone street of SoHo, the installation brings you into a world of fantasy and joy as you enter a fantastic kingdom of animals inhabiting their own world, outside of nature. This pop-up exhibition will be on view at 28-30 Greene Street, SoHo until February 6th.
