Along the Way: SunKoo Yuh
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Along the Way included monumental and small scale porcelain sculptures in combination with drawings and sketches by the internationally-recognized artist SunKoo Yuh. A 32-page catalog accompanied the exhibition with essays by internationally recognized curator Helen W. Drutt English, and noted ceramic artists and educators Wayne Higby and Tony Marsh.
Regardless of scale, Yuh most often begins with a conscious thematic concept. Family life, friends, and daily events intermingle with added symbolic elements such as animals and birds, which are inspired by his Korean heritage. By combining cultures, Yuh’s work achieves a sense of universality through the multiple possibilities of meaning suggested by the iconographic juxtapositions in the final work.
Although each work begins with conscious decisions on content, in most cases Yuh works intuitively and spontaneously as he builds his forms. It is through the process of building, casting, and deductive carving that Yuh’s work defies a straightforward linear narrative format. Working vertically, his figures and elements stack not unlike those of Native American totems, yet the work compresses time and space as each element responds to objects both above and below it. Thus, each resulting sculpture has a complexity as well as an internal logic unique unto itself.
Yuh’s use of glazes, which are vital to the impact of his sculptures, also reflect the spontaneous nature of his working procedure. Acting as an overlay, glazes are applied both to create a specific impact to a certain parts of the sculptural form and is at times applied without regard to the structure, co-mingling color over multiple figures or objects. As Tony Marsh has noted about Yuh’s use of glazes, this level of experimentation comes from Yuh’s extensive understanding of high fire glazes after testing thousands of them over his career. Marsh states “he certainly has an empirical understanding of glaze chemistry that reinforces a strong intuitive approach to working with ceramic color.” It is in Yuh’s expertise and application of glazes that that his sculptures achieve the emotional intensity and vibrancy evidenced in the final work.
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