The Gravity of Movement

• The Korean Craft Museum presents a special craft exhibition to introduce a wide range of contemporary crafts. The last show of this year The Gravity of Movement is designed to intensively showcase works by two craft artists Chang Yeonsoon and Liu Danhua who have consistently forged their own distinctive craft idioms, addressing only one single craft discipline for a long time.
• Chang Yeonsoon has established herself as a representative Korean craft artist in the field of fiber art as the Artist of the Year 2008 selected by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea and with her work chosen as a finalist at Loewe Craft Prize 2018. She has persistently explored fabrics such as abaca(a sort of linen) and teflon mesh(an industrial fiber used for manufacturing conveyor belts), discovering their various possibilities in her own visual language. She has been displaying an extensive range of craft and artistic spirit with a variety of materials couched in her own distinctive technical idioms.
• Liu Danhua has naturally experienced the discipline of ceramics as he was born and raised in Jingdezhen known as the world's oldest porcelain city. Liu Danhua has distinguished himself as a ceramic artist with work that puts emphasis on the material properties of kaolin and follows the tradition of Jingdezhen ceramics. His typical pieces include works that bring about a paper-like thin feeling in the form of ashes and works that display almost alchemistic expressiveness by applying gold dust to ceramics. He has persistently researched new endeavors and extended the arena of the expressive potential of ceramics.
• Craft is a material-specific art that is usually pigeonholed depending on material and technique dealing with the material. Thus, a craft artist tries to explore the material they have chosen deeply and impart their own narrative in search of a new sense.
• We come to recall an artist’s action when appreciating his works. We envisage light movement when viewing works of fiber art, while we imagine heavy movement when viewing works of ceramic art that goes through a process of firing in the kiln.
• We can imagine the sensation a material evokes and view a work of art on the basis of experiences we have in our everyday lives. The artist, however, moves in different directions, against our expectations. No matter how familiar to us a material is, the artist gives rise to completely new works from their own point of view and in their own manner of acceptance.
• The Korean Craft Museum intends to explore the weight of fiber and ceramic’s material properties with two artists through this special exhibition. The museum hopes that this exhibition will serve as an opportunity for the viewer to feel the magnetism of craft as a material-specific art.
• Lee Deulnib
  Korean Craft Museum Curator