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Also this issue: Equal Movement Rights Razzle Dazzle Faith in Freedom Ghost World |
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![](\"../images/teal.gif\") |
April 18-24, 2002
art
![\"Heeseung](\"art3-1.jpg\") Kimono Vases (2002),
approximately 6 inches by 4 inches by 2 inches.
Clay Nation\" width=\"180\" border=\"0\" height=\"121\" />Heeseung Lee, Kimono Vases (2002), approximately 6 inches by 4 inches by 2 inches. Clay Nation |
ARCHIVES .
April 18-24, 2002 art Clay Nation
Heeseung Lee: Solo Exhibition, Harrison Gallery; A Gathering of Peers, Second Floor GalleryThrough April 28, Clay Studio, 139 N. Second St., 215- 925-3453 Heeseung Lee’s small vessels at the Clay Studio are luxurious and exceptionally pleasing. Mostly teapots, tumblers and low vases for ikebana-type flower arrangements, they reflect Asian aesthetics through Chinese contributions to Korean and Japanese design. In press materials, Lee identifies Korean landscape painting as one primary source of the slab-built works. Also cited, and more immediately obvious to viewers, is the textile origin of Lee's glazes layered with fire-on decals of garden motifs. The opulent brocade-like surface is frequently shot with gold, painted on or in decals. Reserved, rather Korean forms combine curved and flat planes with generously arching handles. A few examples of low disk-shaped ikebana pieces are effectively displayed with fresh flowers. Beakers apparently constructed of a base and a wrapped slab of clay flare slightly. "Kimono Vases" are shaped like flattened bells -- possibly meant to resemble kimono skirts -- with small earlike handles glazed a glossy red, perhaps also a reference to the kitschy 1950s Japanese textiles which Lee explores. This lipstick-red glaze is prominent on hooplike handles in nearly every piece. Unlike the body glazes, the red is rarely overglazed with decals or gold. It frequently pools dramatically into the more complex body color. An occasional red bead is a foil to atmospheric superimposed patterns on other surfaces. Beneath the layers of decals, rich glazes of green, ochre, blue and even pale violet become a painted field into which we look, as opposed to the emphatic object-ness of the handles. Lines and the signature "HEESEUNG" are often incised into the glaze without detracting from the decorative pictorial effect. Tiny cylindrical feet on a flat-sided trapezoidal teapot present a velvety black contrast to shimmering vegetative motifs above. These matte areas suggest both the earth beneath the garden and the potential functionality of the wares. Following the high-temperature glaze firing, Lee subjects her small vessels to low-temperature firings incorporating an amazing variety of decals: flowers of all kinds, insects such as butterflies and ladybugs, birds and ferns. Traditionally, household objects decorated with auspicious imagery such as peonies, cherry blossoms and butterflies bring good luck. The final firing is usually for gold luster. This painstaking process produces a compact treasure transfiguring silly commercial decals into the earlier, more elegant motifs which inspired them. Though Lee preserves a slight ironic distance in her work, it will never look cheap. It isn't especially cheap either, and she has happily already sold much of the work in the show. For the Second Floor Gallery of the Clay Studio, Tyler School of Art professor Robert Winokur organized a show by his former students. Considering the high level of work contributed by the 14 artists from seven states, Winokur's graceful title "A Gathering of Peers" is not out of order. Widely recognized for handbuilt sculpture, Winokur not surprisingly picked students who mostly have a sculptural bent. But where the teacher's surfaces tend to be geometrical and flat, those of his students are more organically surreal, though, again, mostly handbuilt. Non-sculptural work includes Mitch Lyons' free-wheeling two-dimensional clay monoprints and Regis Brodie's deeply textured slab-sided bottles imprinted, maplike, with areas of text. The neck and foot of these pieces appear to have been thrown. The only other evidence of wheel-work is Eva Kwong's lovely celadon The Immortal Peach (like Lee's decals, a lucky emblem), a porcelain vessel, twin-lobed and pointed. One might speculate that Winokur imbues his students with his own hypersensitivity to surfaces, though perhaps most ceramists are so inclined. Kevin Kautenburger, who frequently celebrates materials in a state of potentiality, presents unfired clay in handsomely crafted displays. In a box, it's red and damp-looking. In an oval frame, it's marbleized buff and pink. In contrast to Kautenburger's cerebral delicacy, Emily Paulmier's Domestic Silence, a handbuilt raku bust, is memorably torn and ravaged with spots of blood red glaze. Jack Thompson wastes his considerable skills on a pseudo-profound pun in the vegetable-headed Asparagus Buddess. A more satisfying and disturbing melding of organic and mechanical infuses Syd Carpenter's wall-mounted Vent. Cryptic cartoon narrative is the story of Benjamin Schulman's wall mounted Life is just a fantasy. Can you live this fantasy? I love Candice Depew's ornate Commemorative Work: a teenager's doodle -- "I love Bob!" -- realized beyond her wildest dreams. The dark boxy silhouettes of three of Winokur's current house variations contrast with more agitated surfaces such as Robert Lyon's cracked tarry tower or Mitch Messina's coil-built Icarus-like Scorper. Winokur's full-scale homage to Magritte's painting of a locomotive emerging from a fireplace is an amusing variation on Magritte's Freudian formula. A house replaces the phallic locomotive. And a chunk of black ceramic parodies Magritte's orgasmic white steam. Perhaps the only cumulative lesson to be learned from this show is that good teachers produce individualistic students, but it's a worthwhile message nonetheless. 
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