About the artist´s works
Heon Suk Hong Ceramics can be understood as systems of objects that arise from specific design and manufacturing plans. These systems take the form of “series” that are clearly defined by a set of criteria and formal, material, chromatic or constructive relations between pieces. Yet the ‘criteria‘ of the series are still sufficiently dynamic and open enough to allow a variety of objects to be developed, avoiding uniformity.
The objects in the series are the consequence of evolutions and transformations of sizes, textures, colours. The variations are not mechanical, nor random, but are organically related, so that the elements in the series can be understood as if they were part of the same “body”, a single object. By contemplating the entire series we can discover its evident unity.
The objects that form these series however are conceptually so solid that they also work individually in an exhibition room or domestic space, just as a quince branch adorning a kitchen tale. In one of Heon Suk‘s latest series, the constructivist vases and flowerpots - created from simple, almost industrial, shapes and volumes - have an unquestionable poetic that reminds us of the ikebana, especially when we see branches and leaves integrated into them.
In experimentation, not everything is valid; there are principles. In the case of Heon Suk, one principle she applies is to work from the white colour as a base that provides
a showcase for the ceramic pastes, so beautiful and as difficult to work as the porcelain. The white becomes a support on which to apply the ceramic decals of primary colours or make incisions on the surfaces of the pieces. On other occasions, the artist experiments with unorthodox techniques in traditional ceramics such as graphite.
Multiplicity, variations and alterations as both the working process and final objective are the result of Heon Suk’s very personal vision of ceramics and its production. The produced results sit within an undefined and original area between design and art, and from them both she extracts those nuances and particularities that make her work deeply original.