Lee Kang-hyo - A Beautiful Life

LEE KANG-HYO

goldmark

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£10

LEE KANG-HYO

LEE KANG-HYO A Beautiful Life

Jay Goldmark

goldmark 2014

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A Beautiful Life

‘Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.’ - Thích Nhất Hạnh Seoul Airport. The photographer scans the crowd for a potter he has never met. A tall, handsome Korean approaches wearing a slim fitting black linen suit. Bohemian, more like a beatnik poet or jazz musician than a potter, with cool, black-rimmed glasses and an enigmatic smile. With a penchant for Mild Sevens and Kentucky Bourbon, this is one of Korea's finest living potters, Lee Kang-hyo.

Arriving at the potter's compound the following day, rested and raring to go, the photographer is first welcomed into a living area, low wooden table at its centre, kettle already on stove heating water to a perfect temperature. Surrounded by instantly recognisable teapot, cups and bowls and sitting cross legged on the warm ondol floor Lee Kang-hyo is already making preparations and what was to become a daily ritual begins. Several different types of tea, meticulously brewed, sipped from exquisitely tiny cups for up to an hour. With each strain the water temperature is modified, the brewing time lengthened or shortened for the perfect cup. One type of tea would envigorate; another, fermented for 15 years and smelling of wet leaves on a forest floor, would warm and nourish; another still, relax and calm. All accompanied by Korean delicacies. Eat, drink, talk, think, then to work.

Lee Kang-hyo stands, transfixed, in the courtyard beside his studio.

He looks up at the sky and from a distance the photographer watches him gently describe the cloud formations with his hands,

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time and time again. Memorising their ragged edges and swollen bellies for future decoration. The next time he steps out from his studio he is carrying a long stick. Spinning it around his body and stepping gracefully through the courtyard, these martial arts exercises calm his mind and stretch and reenergise his aching body. The only other time he comes out is for a cigarette, eyes again to the sky, clear and bright.

Lee Kang-hyo was born in Seoul in 1961. From a young age he wanted to make things and experimented with any materials to hand, making wooden furniture, drawing and painting. After high school he asked himself some fundamental questions; Who am I? What am I good at? What can I do to make my life fulfilling?

He decided he would become an artist and go to the most prestigious art school in Korea. He applied to study art at Hongik University but, through a quirk of fate, ended up studying ceramics.

This was his introduction to clay.

At the time, sculptural ceramics had become popular in Korea but while his contemporaries were emulating this western style the ever inquisitive Lee was visiting the museums and antique shops of Seoul, looking at pots and absorbing what had been made before. He particularly admired the shape and sound of the huge earthenware onggi jars that had, during his childhood and for centuries before, stood in rows in an area called jangdokdae outside every Korean house. Due to the addition of sand to the body of iron-rich clay the glazed onggi were waterproof but porous allowing air to move and circulate. Koreans called this process 'onggi drawing breath'. This made them ideal for the making and storing of fermented foodstuffs, such as gochujang (fermented chili pepper, bean and rice paste), doenjang

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(fermented soy bean paste), soy sauce, seafood, pickled vegetables, and kimchi (fermented cabbage), staples of the Korean diet. Once a year the whole family would get together and manufacture the pastes which would then last for the next 12 months in their onggi pots, preserving the food and retaining a moderate temperature and humidity through all seasons, without the need for any electric energy.

There was an honesty and generosity to their appearance, a fullness of form and volume that Lee found both comforting and satisfying. The largest onggi jars he saw were used for fermenting makgeolli, a popular rice wine, and their monumental sculptural proportions and simple aesthetic immediately touched Lee's heart and awakened his creativity. This is what he wanted to make.

However, in the mid 1970s, with the arrival of home refrigeration, onggi pots and the incredible techniques used to make them, dating from 4-5000 BC, had started to disappear. The university couldn't teach him how to make these big jars and Onggi Masters were few and far between. So after 2 years obligatory military service Lee travelled to the southern tip of Korea, to Ulsan, and studied with Onggi Master, Hwang Mal-su.

For 3 days the photographer documents Lee Kang-hyo at work as he builds 3 giant onggi pots simultaneously. The techniques and methods used are virtually unknown in the West and he is able to produce monumental jars with an incredible speed.

Sitting on his heels, he slaps a heavy slab of clay onto the ground, from side to side, until it resembles a long clay rope. He drapes it over his shoulder and down his back then with amazing dexterity applies it to the growing wall of the pot, the coordinated pressure of the left hand and the knuckles of the right hand exerting a

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rotating downward pressure. Balancing on one foot the other heel performs a rapid succession of forward motions moving the wheel forward at a speed coordinated with the work of the hands.

He feeds it continuously for several revolutions of the wheel.

The next step involves a wooden paddle and anvil. Lee beats against the inner and outer walls of the vessel while simultaneously revolving the wheel with his left foot. The walls of the pot are thinned and homogenized, the clay is compressed and strengthened. Two scrapers are then used, rigidly opposed to each other, while strong legs pull the wheel around. Finally the top edge is trimmed with a wooden knife and a moistened strip of cloth is used to create a thickened lip form around the mouth of the pot. The photographer barely has time to put his camera down before he is called to help, with 2 other assistants, lift and carry the pot to a suitable drying place. The physicality of the work and mental focus required is intense.

For 3 years Lee Kang-hyo strove to perfect the ancient onggi techniques. He built 20-30 onggi pots every day and then demolished them. Each year he would progress to make bigger and bigger ones. This was his training. Lee enjoyed the simplicity of the Onggi Master's life. Up early, breakfast, make onggi, lunch, make onggi, eat dinner and make onggi. He no longer felt it necessary to be an artist, only to enjoy the simple life. He had met Kyong Hee, also a potter, at university and they married whilst Lee was studying with the Onggi Master. In Korean tradition the man buys a house and the woman fills it with furniture. They were so poor that, instead, she bought him an old oil kiln and some clay and glaze instead. By day, Lee made onggi pots and in the evenings and weekends Lee and his wife made pots to sell.

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Their ambition was to set up their own studio. Another 3 years making very big sculptural pots for his old university professor in Seoul and they had enough money saved to buy some land in the countryside and build a studio.

Lee's artistic nature inspired him to add a twist to traditional onggi ware and so began his experiment with other shapes and other techniques. He decided that every 3 years he would try to learn new skills, new glazes and decoration in the attempt to find his own voice. He tried different clays, different slips. So many times he opened the kiln to failure that his wife begged him to stick to what he knew. Lee would make 10 big pots a day to express his energy. His wife cried, make small stuff we can sell! Gradually he realised that small things also expressed energy. He tried combining onggi techniques with punch’ŏng decoration, the first time this had been done, and everything changed. Koreans were looking for new young potters, and hard work and good timing brought Lee to their attention.

Punch’ŏng is a form of Korean stoneware where the coarse dark clay body of the pot is coated with a white slip and then freely decorated using many different methods. The style emerged in the early Joseon Dynasty, a time of cultural growth and unsurpassed creativity at the end of the 14th century, and replaced the previously popular and more refined celadon ware made during the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392). The forms were elegantly simple, tactile, obviously handmade and unpretentious, and above all inexhaustibly creative. The potters revelled in the freedom of expression open to them and punch’ŏng ware spread across the country. However, during the Japanese 'Hideyoshi' invasions of Korea (1592-98), often called the 'pottery wars', kilns and

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workshops were destroyed and Korean master potters were kidnapped in order to bolster the Japanese pottery industry. This, and the rise in taste for porcelain ceramics, led to the eventual demise of punch’ŏng in Korea. The kidnapped potters used punch’ŏng wares to appease the Japanese aesthetic and in doing so inspired generations of Japanese potters and tea connoisseurs alike. Later, attempting to imitate porcelain, the potters brightened the surface of their grey pots by brushing on white slip. This process is called gye yal (brushstroke), or in Japan, hakeme.

Some of Lee's forms echo those of the early punch’ŏng craftsmen, flask-shaped bottles flattened into canteen forms and drum-shaped bottles, horizontal cylinders with rounded ends where Lee has carved flowers, leaves, fish, trees from the dark body clay of the vessels. The white slip then sits in the excavations, highlighting these natural motifs which stand proud. Lee also expertly uses the gye yal technique. A brush is used to make a swift, spontaneous thick white stroke inside or outside of a bowl. The contrast of dark and light materials has a beauty of its own and each pot feels fresh and uniquely considered.

Lee Kang-hyo is an artist who has spent 30 years learning how to make the perfect canvas. There is an assuredness to his forms that the dynamism of his decoration depends upon. Many of his shapes are traditional in origin but Lee is most definitely making work for a modern audience. He demonstrates a dexterity in clay and an ability to make pots which truly sing before any decoration is even applied. In his slip painting, Lee is unmatched in skill and confidence, working with a certainty that comes with decades of experience. It brings to mind the Abstract Expressionism of the '50s and the Minimalism of the '60s. Firstly he will ladle on a

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rough coat of white slip. While the slip is still wet, he will work quickly, using his hands to make gestural, expressive marks, using tools to incise through the slip into the clay itself. Sometimes he will brush the slip on and then stand away from the pot and, like Pollack, flick and spatter different coloured slips with his fingers while turning the wheel with his foot. Sometimes, Lee's pots are decorated simply with differing white slips like the monochrome paintings of Ryman. If he has an audience he may perform his 'action painting' which first began on a visit to America in 2001.

He likes to feel the interaction between his and the audience's energy. He plays traditional Korean drum and gong music and, totally in the moment, uninhibited, decorates his pots with a startling primal force that belies his quiet, humble exterior. Lee will also scratch and scrape into the drying glaze with a beautiful stiff bristled brush. Mountains, waterfalls, clouds, the wind, snow, forests, rivers. All of nature is in Lee Kang-hyo's pots.

In his 40s Lee thought again about his life. Why do I make pots?

He had always worked very hard and it had taken its toll on his body. The work he was doing was extremely physically demanding and not peaceful at all. He was exhausted. He had back problems, wore a brace when he worked and had to go to hospital at least once a year. He decided he wanted to live what he calls a 'beautiful' life. He took himself into the mountains for 2 and a half months of contemplation and meditation and now, 10 years on, still practices yoga for his mind and body and reads a great deal of philosophy. When he was young and looking straight ahead, he was missing the moment. He thought that only the mind was important, not the body. Now he realises that the mind and body are 2 sides of the same coin, he can see more, feel more, live a

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more 'beautiful' life. He wants his life to echo the natural world around him. Nature is always changing, the seasons, the sky, the clouds, the wind. Lee is interested in what can't be seen. The wind, he knows it is there, can see its action but not itself. He wants to be like the wind. Everything that exists has energy. He wants to transfer his energy through the clay.

The beauty of his work is undeniable; spontaneous and direct, generous of form and naturally inventive. Look at the conical vases, the handles on the lids of his store jars and teapots, the invitingly ample mouths of his moon jars and dark-edged necks of the slab bottles. Trace your hand across the painterly, semi-abstract landscape decoration of the wall pieces and the much admired bursts of tangerine blushes across his tall vases and round bottles.

Stand in the breathtaking presence of the monumental onggi jars.

Every pot, large or small, a work of art; each as individual as a fingerprint and perfectly weighted, a relaxed and confident marriage of style and function.

As they parted Lee Kang-hyo gave the photographer a cup and told him that a pot has 2 lives, the potter gives birth to it and the owner brings it up. And now the photographer sits writing, drinking green tea from this tiny cup and although he is 5600 miles from Korea, the connection he feels with its maker is humbling.

He remembers the soft clay, slow wheel and fast hands, the transference of energy in that moment. When modern life gets complicated Lee Kang-hyo's pots are like the man himself, an antidote, genuinely Korean, fresh and vital.

Jay Goldmark, 2014

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23. Onggi Vase Punch’ŏng. Cosmos 67.0 x 72.0 cm

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1. Large Vase Punch’ŏng. Mountain Water 50.0 x 76.0 cm

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opposite 18. Tall Vase Punch’ŏng. The Sky 55.0 x 26.0 cm next page right 10. Moon Jar Punch’ŏng 37.0 x 39.0 cm

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68. Large Jar Punch’ŏng. The Sky 32.0 x 33.0 cm

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41. Flat Bottle Punch’ŏng 32.0 x 25.0 cm

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opposite 84. Box Punch’ŏng 32.0 x 25.0 cm next page left 30. Oval Bottle Punch’ŏng 19.0 x 38.0 cm next page right 58. Big Dish Punch’ŏng. Forest 7.0 x 41.0 cm

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previous page right 152. Teapot Punch’ŏng 14.0 x 11.0 cm opposite 91. Flat Bottle Punch’ŏng 33.0 x 30.0 cm

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28. Oval Bottle Punch’ŏng 25.0 x 30.0 cm

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opposite 157. Small Faced Bottle Punch’ŏng 16.0 x 13.0 cm next page left 83. Box Punch’ŏng 25.0 x 31.0 cm next page right 86. Flat Bottle Punch’ŏng 27.0 x 24.0 cm

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Lee Kang-hyo 1961 Born in Korea 1983 B.F.A. Department of Ceramics, Hong-ik University, Seoul, Korea 1985-88 Studied the making of onggi ware in South Kyongsang Province, Korea

Solo Exhibitions 2012 2010 2009 2008 2006

2005 2003

2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1993

Gallery REBEIGE (Seoul, Korea) Art factory Gallery (Paju, Korea) Song House Gallery (Busan, Korea) JoengSoYoung gallery (Seoul, Korea) Pucker Gallery (Boston, USA) Song House Gallery (Pusan, Korea) Pucker Gallery (Boston, USA) Space Mom Museum (Cheongju, Korea) Cheongbaek Gallery (Daegu, Korea) Ye Song Gallery (Daegu, Korea) Tong-In Gallery (New York, USA) Tong-In Auction Gallery (Seoul, Korea) Tea bowls Gallery MaMoe (Seoul, Korea) Gallery Jo (Seoul, Korea) Moosim Gallery (Cheongju, Korea) Nanohana (Japan) Togo Gallery (Japan) Yamakki Gallery (Japan) Hand Gallery (Japan) Gallery Des Embios (Switzerland) Musim Gallery (Cheongju, Korea) Semi Gallery (Seoul, Korea) Hakcheon Gallery (Cheongju, Korea) To Art Space Gallery (Seoul, Korea) Hakcheon Gallery (Cheongju, Korea)

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Group Exhibitions 2014

2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007

2006 2005 2004 2003

2002

SFO Museum presents - Dual Natures in Ceramics: Eight Contemporary Artists from Korea – (San Francisco, USA) Triennale di Milano - Constancy & Change in Korean Traditional Craft (Milano, Italy / Hangzhou, China / London, UK) Cheong Ju Craft biennale - Main exhibition1 (Cheong ju, Korea) Two man show - UM gallery (Seoul, Korea) Two man show - Meditative Journeys, Mindy Solomon gallery (Florida, USA) Poetry in Clay (San Francisco, USA) Two man show - Dong won Gallery (Daegu, Korea) Fowler Museum at UCLA - Life in Ceramics (California, USA) GyeongGi Ceramic Museum - (Gwangju, Korea) GyeongGi International Ceramic Fair 2008 (Korea) Traditional Korean Crafts (UN Building, New York) Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2007 (Cheongju, Korea) Tradition Transformed: Contemporary Korean Ceramics (Spain, Ireland, UK) Teapot & Art - Uijae Museum (Gwangju, Korea) SOFA International Art Fair (New York, Chicago) The 3rd World Ceramic Biennale 2005 - Joseon Royal kiln Museum (Gwangju, Korea) Korea International Art Fair (Seoul, Korea) From the Fire (USA) Special Exhibition - Tradition Korea Ceramics - Joseon Royal Kiln Museum (Gwangju, Korea) Korean Ceramics: Tradition and Transformation (San Diego, USA) International Art Fair (Busan, Korea) Tea, Zen, Ceramics - The International Living Pottery Art of Taiwan, Japan and Korea (Taiwan) 21st Century Korea Contemporary Artist Exhibition (Sungkyunkwan University Museum, Korea)

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2001 2000

Teapot & Art - Uijae Museum (Gwangju, Korea) Teapot Special Exhibition of Korea - The Korea Folk Museum of Korea Korean Contemporary Ceramic Art Exhibition (Edinburgh, Scotland) Korean Contemporary Ceramic Art Exhibition (Fukuoka, Japan)

International Workshops 2013 2011

2006 2005 2004 2003 2001

1999 1993

Clay Push Gulgong 2013 workshop (Australia) Asian Art Museum of San Francisco - Poetry in Clay (San Francisco, USA) University of Georgia Workshop (Georgia, USA) Archie Bray International Workshop (Montana, USA) Wood Kiln Workshop (Gwangju, Korea) Ceder Lake Craft Center (West Virginia, USA) International Woodfire Festival (Iowa, USA) NCECA Workshop (San Diego, USA) Onggi American Tour sponsored by the Korea Foundation (State University of New York at New Paltz, Alfred University, Western Illinois State College, University of Iowa, California State University, Long Beach) International Ceramics Festival, Aberystwyth, Wales, UK Togei Messe Mashiko Workshop, Mashiko, Japan NCECA Workshop (San Diego, USA)

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Art Fairs 2014 2014 2014 2013 2013 2013 2013 2012 2012 2011 2011

Aqua 14 Art, Miami Zona Maco Art MRKT Art Miami SOFA, Chicago Zona Maco Mexico Arte Contemporaneo The Metro Show, New York ART MRKT, San Francisco SOFA, New York San Diego Contemporary Art Fair SOFA, Chicago

Work in Public Collections •Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, Illinois) •Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (USA) •British Museum (London, United Kingdom) •Choson Royal Kiln Museum (Kwangju, Korea) •Duxbury Art Complex (Duxbury, Massachusetts) •Holderness School (Holderness, New Hampshire) •Incheon World Ceramics Center (Incheon, Korea) •International Ceramic Museum (Faenza, Italy) •Musēe National de Ceramique Sèvres (Sèvres, France) •Musēe Royal De Mariemont (Belgium) •Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, Massachusetts) •Newark Museum of Art (Newark, New Jersey) •Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) •SungKyunKwan University Museum (Seoul, Korea) •Tokotin Museum of Japanese Art (Haifa, Israel) •Togei Messe Mashiko (Mashiko, Japan) •Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK)

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Text: © Jay Goldmark 2014 Photographs: © Jay Goldmark © Vicki Uttley Design: Porter / Goldmark

ISBN 978-1-909167-18-6 goldmark Uppingham, Rutland, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424 goldmarkart.com

A Goldmark film on Lee Kang-hyo has been produced to accompany this exhibition.