강석영
Kang Sukyoung

“The artificial lines that a person intentionally cuts or pierces are not natural. But the lines bent and created in fire cannot be imitated by humans. Thanks to many years of skill and experience, I induce fortuity to achieve the transformations I want.”—excerpt from an interview with the artist

Kang Sukyoung is a ceramic artist known for transforming the “beauty of Korean white.” As a professor at Ewha Womans University’s College of Art & Design for 30 years, Kang has served as dean and director of the Research Institute of Ceramics and has also devoted himself to research and nurturing future generations of artists. His work avoids flashy techniques, aiming instead to reach a starting point that contains infinite plastic possibilities, converging on the purest achromatic color: white. The artist focuses on the primary element to be addressed in ceramics, the “culture of texture,” or the cultural character expressed through texture. His works, deeply imbued with the “beauty of Korean white,” have been recognized internationally for their plastic qualities and have been included in permanent collections and exhibited alongside works by world-class artists at the International Olympic Ceramic Sculpture Museum in Athens, Greece, since 2003. They are also housed in prestigious institutions in Korea and abroad, including the Brooklyn Museum in the United States, the Victoria and Albert Museum in the United Kingdom, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. He also transformed the Seoul Museum of Craft Art’s outer wall into a single artwork by weaving together over 2,000 pieces of ceramics, including white porcelain, celadon, and buncheong ware. In this exhibition, Kang Sukyoung presents his unique world of abstract ceramics, based on his long-term research of production methods and techniques. The work, embodying diverse ceramic expression, interact with a “wall” of infinite possibilities and poses the question of what constitutes a craft wall.