L I G H T N E S S O F B E I N G

Group Exhibition at Onna House in 2022

East Hampton, New York

The Lightness of Being celebrates five extraordinary female ceramicists under one roof, each exploring environment, healing and movement in unique ways, while in dialogue with one another. Artist include s by Leah Kaplan, Sabra Moon Elliot, Yoona Hur and Yuko Nishikawa. The exhibition also features Katherine Glenday, presented in partnership with Les Ateliers Courbet.

Onna House founded by Lisa Perry, a designer, collector, and a curator, is a beautifully restored  modernist home built in the 1960’s filled with unique art pieces, furniture and objects. It is a private home and studio where friends can discover and collect new work; engage, support, and collaborate with artists; and relax while enjoying a stunning architectural setting and garden.  

For the show, Yoona Hur presented clay sculptures and paintings made out of paper. Because of their ancient, universal and tactile quality of the medium, nearly every culture used them for ceremonies and rituals because of their deep and direct connection to nature (land, soil, water and tree). “There’s this incredible aspect of forgiving, healing and acceptance when I work with such materials. I hope that the audience also feels both vulnerability and expansiveness in them.”

The Moon Clouds series are inspired by Hur’s Korean heritage, largely the iconic traditional pottery called Moonjars from Joseon dynasty (1392–1910). Birthed out of Buddhism and into Confucianism, it embodies oneness and harmony with nature, imperfection and letting go of attachments. Historically, it was used to hold both the visible like honey, grain and oil and the invisible like luck, health and happiness.

The proximity and full view of the existing rock and moss gardens from the exhibition room at Onna House offered a unique installation opportunity. Hur placed the ceramic works in relation to the existing surrounding elements — she created a sense of movement and flow that would interact closely with the natural sunlight and shadows as well as the forms and textures of the rocks, moss and trees.

The paintings (Seon, White Earth, and Adrift ) are derived from her own experience as a practitioner of meditation and her fascination with the Korean traditional mulberry paper called Hanji that can be both delicate and resilient depending on how it is mixed with other materials.  For Hur, the simple yet highly textural surfaces offers the space of slowing down and clearing the mind — simple act of noticing the subtle shifts and details in light and shadow. Or recognizing what arises within as one faces an open and abstract canvas.

The emptiness of the works both in ceramics and paintings can be perceived as a meditative space where one is invited to contemplate and observe our ever-evolving interiority.

The Clay Rocks are Hur’s on-going series that started at the very beginning of her ceramic practice. These intuitive and anamorphic forms have been composed as site-event specific installations or as individual sculptures in the past. For Onna House, she created a new type titled “Clay Rocks: Women”. Finished with golden leaf, each rock represents sacrednesses, honor and celebration and homage to ancient statues and talisman made are out of gold representing protection, wisdom and abundance. Arranged in a circle that can expand to an infinite scale, Clay Rocks: Women celebrates the beauty and strength of womanhood, gatherings and camaraderie.

Photography by Glen Allsop @glenallsop