Kwak Yoonjee
ENG
Vestiges, 2026
Stoneware clay, colored stoneware clay, hand-building, 1200℃, 63 x 50 x 120cm.
Kwak Yoonjee's work begins with the concept of the "vessel." In Korea, a person who is broad-minded and accepting is often described as having "a large vessel." Taking note of this expression, she regards the vessel not simply as a functional object for holding things, but as a form that reflects the human attitude of expanding and adjusting oneself through relationships with others.
The work has an open structure built by slowly stacking clay by hand. Within it, opposing qualities—strength and delicacy, softness and firmness—exist together. The form is not completed in a single gesture; it takes shape gradually over a long span of time, sustaining a quiet tension throughout the process. Rather than showing how unstable the form is, the artist is more interested in how it nonetheless holds and endures its own shape.
