Assembly
2017 —
Ceramic
H, h 6-3/4 x 2-1/8 x 4-1/8 in.
6-3/4 x 2-1/8 x 4-1/8 in.
Extra wide n 6-3/4 x 2-1/8 x 2-1/8 in.

Assembly is an ongoing, generative body of sculptural ceramic vessels that began in 2017. Derived from modular pipe forms, works from this slip-cast series are defined by their uniquely carved, colorful surfaces and their utilitarian ambiguity. Ranging in size from tabletop to table leg, these playful, iconic forms make reference to architecture, animals, and typography.

T & T “AAHAHHHHH. When n and H meet, it’s A with a flat top, a dutifully appropriate expression of surprise. When A meets H, it’s tall AH, the happy sound of a rhetorical question. When three H meet, it’s HHH, a sound of silent laughter. Together, they make AAHAHHHHH, the sound of unexpected discovery followed by a long half-suppressed laugh.” Large extra wide n A & A


Large T 6 x 4-1/2 x 8 in.
AH, HH 6-3/4 x 2-1/8 x 7-7/8 in.
HHH 6-3/4 x 2-1/8 x 12-1/2 in.
Large extra wide n 6 x 4-1/2 x 4-1/2 in.

The title of each piece is borrowed from the names of pipe fittings, speaking to language and modularity:“T meets 90 degree elbow to make h.” Each piece suggests a component of an assembly, but one that is undefinable, obscure and expansive.

Impermanent collection (LA: A+D Architecture & Design Museum, 2018)
Tasteview (Seoul: Tastehouse 19 Dec – 21 Apr, 2019)


Text by Kim Park
* This text was originally written for Temperatures vol.2 on Assembly series

About h*

I used to work in a simple white office on the 15th floor of a post-war building. Unlike its bronze-covered art deco lobby, the office was forcefully minimal, with full efforts not to have any decoration. It was imposed on many of us working there, but we gradually found our own corners in the building. T told me one day with composed excitement if I saw n-shape tiles connecting the bathroom cell wall and the floor. We talked about how the grouts were unusually coarse and rough as if someone wanted to exert freedom in that hidden corner.

It took me a while to tell T that one of my favorite corners in the building was the stairwell with a skylight. There, pipes, cables, and mysterious fixtures were exposed, with various patterns, numbers, and letters assigned to them. It was an accumulation of meanings and symbols over decades, legible only to a handful of people doing maintenance. I would find comfort in staring at the pure form of the signs without any responsibility for understanding them. Although I never saw anyone in the stairwell, a couple of things changed once in a while, like the seam of a pipe getting extra shiny rubber paint over. I would find some traces of the work, which would be otherwise unnoticeable, like a bright red plastic tag with a stenciled letter h on the floor. I picked it up and placed it behind my computer. Soon enough, I had a substantial collection of found things including number tags, fittings, a piece of tape, layers of chipped paint, and so on. I carefully arranged them in a specifically random order every Friday for the week ahead.

It was when the single line was getting too crowded for the number of things in my collection that T told me that they were going to leave the office. I just nodded in silence. I knew that there were things added by someone else in my single line of things. Space in-between things was disappearing slowly and steadily. The crowded line turned 90 degrees and was becoming L. It was time. I made an L-shape box in craft paper with dividers in-between for things — a souvenir for T and the beginning of a new line.