Alters

Brooklyn-based sculptor Eun-Ha Paek (South Korean, b. 1974) is known for her hand-built and 3D-printed ceramic figures, which incorporate humor, personal history, and storytelling. Her newest body of work includes anthropomorphic serveware, cartoon busts, moon jars, and her signature Mongmong Lassie vessels. Her sculptures are presented alongside a video installation and a Risograph flip-book.

Titled Alters for the alter egos and divided selves depicted in her work, Paek’s second solo exhibition with the gallery gives voice to archetypal figures beset by questions of duality, self-doubt, and internal contradiction. In her doubled and unraveling portraits of cartoonish characters, Paek’s humorous deconstruction of the self is made apparent. A 3D printing machine is programmed to falter and err, draping loops of clay over the sides of her characters’ faces. As a result, the sculpture appears to melt as though caving under pressure or a weight of emotion. Like a faulty television signal which produces static across the clean animated lines of a Sunday morning cartoon, her sculptural process pushes up against our interactions with technology to reveal something destructive in the interplay of viewership and being seen. Paek’s gestural handling of glaze and surface texture exacerbates this sense of breakdown. Often, the cuteness of her characters rubs shoulders with existential doubt: human skulls as reminders of mortality, a stack of dinner plates which hides interchangeable emotional states, and a two-faced moon jar wrestling with its conflicted identities.