Within the late seventeenth century, throughout Korea’s Joseon Dynasty, a very rotund, plain white porcelain vessel rose to reputation. Nicknamed “moon jars” for his or her milky glaze and spherical type, the earliest examples have been completed in wood-fired kilns so as to add character to their minimalist surfaces. Treasured and reproduced by expert artisans all through the centuries, the basic model continues to affect modern artisans.
For Brooklyn-based artist Sung Hwa Kim, the normal Korean jar serves as a place to begin for an ongoing collection of work invoking ornamental vessels as metaphorical containers for the previous. Within the context of the still-life, he conjures what he refers to as “visual haikus,” poetic evocations of the passing of time, like altering seasons and the transition from day into evening.
In Kim’s present solo exhibition, Spring, Summer time, Fall, Winter, and Spring at Harper’s, the artist emphasizes quiet, on a regular basis moments in home settings that usually overlook brick buildings or the long-lasting Brooklyn Bridge. A few of his compositions are vibrantly monochrome, setting the scene for a vase on prime of a desk, containing a scene from a historic portray or faraway panorama.
Kim usually incorporates spectral, glowing bugs (beforehand) and situates the vessels on sills or close to home windows. Vases include landscapes, timber, and animals, whereas decor on the partitions reference works by well-known modernists like Vincent van Gogh, René Magritte, and Sanyu.
Contained in the pots, the flora seems ghost-like or light, rendered in fuzzy grey marks, and objects left close by, like a pencil and pocket book or a ingesting glass, recommend that somebody was lately current however an unspecified time has handed since they left. The jars function portals to different occasions and locations simply because the home windows present views of one other world. “Ultimately, Kim masterfully inhabits the role of guide, making perceptible the delicate threshold between what fades and what endures,” says a gallery assertion.
Spring, Summer time, Fall, Winter, and Spring continues in New York by means of April 5. See extra on the artist’s web site and Instagram.
