We’re starting our featured potter series on CFile with a man who states himself so simply. Kiho Kang’s coiled and pinched works are in white with a texture all their own. They’re architectural, peaceful and still.
Kang, according to his biography on Art Aurea, constructs his strictly geometrical vessel shapes using the coil method. He said he prefers this process, “because it gives me a range of designs and a richness of expression, it forces me to work slowly and deliberately and it gives the pieces a special surface quality.” The surfaces of the porcelain look randomly structured and are always matte and unglazed on the exterior, partially transparent and glazed in the interior. He lovingly shapes tea utensils or some with an unspecified function in this way. Their playful elements mean they look equally appealing in a group or solo.
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Kang was born in Jin-Hae, South Korea. He received his BA and MA in ceramic art at Kookmin University in Seoul in 2009 and in 2011 he received his MA in artistic ceramic and glass at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany. He is the winner of the World Ceramic Exposition Foundation Award, the Cheongju Byerischer Staatspreis, the Award of the Justus Brinckmann Gesellschaft, among others.
Do you love or loathe this contemporary ceramic art? Let us know in the comments.
Click to see a larger image.
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It seems to me that there are certain trends in ceramic art, functional and non.
Then everything begins to look alike. I love the texture but the forms, I have seen done too many times before.
These trends in ceramics start in the graduate schools—and spread like wild-fire.
I want to see something fresh and new. Also, everything looks so perfect, not real,
like things you can buy in a store—put the hand-made back in handmade.