Rooted firmly in the tradition of 달항아리—dalhangari, or moon jars—‘Beauty Lies Within’ presents works by ceramic artist, Jane Yang-D’Haene, exploring her earliest recollections of the Korean landscape, her birthplace. Creating new visions of place and self through abstraction and experimentation, Yang-D’Haene’s new body of work expands on her earliest influences and extends across the arc of her lived experience, cultural identity and creative practice. She seeks to transform the emotional experience of memory into the physical.
Moon jars, historically made from two hemispherical halves of clay joined and fired to become a smooth porcelain vessel, have come to dominate her practice. Although derived from these polished objects, Yang-D’Haene’s moon jars are meticulously textured. The artist describes the historical framework that moon jars provide not as a blueprint nor as an adversary, but as a vehicle for contemporary experimentation. Her relationship to clay itself is similar: Yang-D’Haene explores and stretches its bounds without being restrained by its history.
Assembled as a series, the collection engages in a dialogue between material and maker in which her innovative process-driven approach pushes the boundaries of her material to their limits. Many of her pieces begin with porcelain—considered the purest clay—hand-thrown on the wheel to create vessels deemed perfect in shape and form according to the aesthetic and craft principles of Korean and Western traditions alike. For the exhibition, using the hand and through skillful disruption and internal manipulation, new forms have emerged, evoking the shifts and tension between our outer and inner lives. Through the cutting and slicing of clay, application of various glazes and decorative techniques, the richly textured surfaces of Yang-D’Haene’s works on view manifest shifting perspectives and affective realities.
This exploration of moon jars results in conceptually challenging objects that refute traditional relationships between form and function. There is a sculptural quality to her works, which crater, bloom and percolate like planetary bodies. In this way, the vessels read like celebrations not only of nature and the universe at large but of the earth in specific and, therefore, of the artist’s beloved medium. Embracing the often-unpredictable process of clay firing, the artist even describes some of her final vessels as unfinished. Flaws are the conceptual and formal core of the work; they imbue her pieces with an energy that complements the fluid tonal shifts she produces across their surfaces. With her oeuvre, Yang-D’Haene demonstrates an ability to deliver beauty from imperfection.
