Amalgam

HB381 is pleased to announce Amalgam, a solo exhibition of recent works by Brooklyn-based multimedia artist Eun-Ha Paek (Korean, b. 1974). In Amalgam, Paek presents a series of ceramic sculptures, accompanied by a video installation. Created by hand as well as through 3D printing technology, the sculptures give physical form to the artist’s inner narratives and personal history, while exploring broader themes of identity and human experience.

Paek’s hybrid approach to ceramics is informed by her background in animation and film. Her attempts to roll increasingly smaller, tighter coils eventually lead her to introduce 3D printing to her practice, enabling detail that would not be possible by hand. The resulting pieces, while finally static, are created through a process that in many ways mimics stop motion animation. Poodle Tower of Babble, modeled after a Dutch tulipière, is an amalgam of the traditional and the experimental, both aesthetically and in its construction. The two lower levels are hand built; these were then 3D scanned and each successive layer was printed in diminishing scale to achieve the tiered effect. The end result is unrecognizable from the original—approaching nothing but a dissolved spire at the very top—suggesting the mutability of memory.