Freestanding Forms

ceramic sculptures
pigmented clay, hand-built
2024–present

The freestanding works are coil-built ceramic sculptures in coloured clay. They began in 2024, when work that had grown on the wall for years stepped away from it and into space. By then colour had become a natural part of the visual language, and it came along with the work.

Coiling asked for a different kind of clay than the wall works, one better suited to building upward. The way of working with colour stayed the same. Pigments are blended into the clay body, and the colour carries through the whole of each piece. Because the sculptures can be seen from every side, the colour is not met in one view. It shifts as the viewer moves around the work.

The works are built coil by coil, and the form rises slowly. In these works, subtle and unpredictable patterns appear as the structure grows, and they cannot be fully planned in advance. Each piece keeps the traces of this accumulation: the pace of the hand, and the small decisions made along the way.

The freestanding work leaves room for personal experience and reflection alongside the research into material and form. The Uri series, initiated in 2024, is where this started. It was the first time the work tried to hold meaning and a voice. At that time, the connections between people had become a central theme in the artist’s life, and the series grew from there. Uri means ‘we’ in Korean.