Yaerin Pyun

 

Using ceramics, Yaerin Pyun defamiliarizes the things that are familiar to us to encourage audiences to look closer at details and rediscover the hidden aspects of everyday. The philosopher Novalis defines romanticism as "romanticising the ordinary into something meaningful, the mundane into something mysterious, a dignity of the unknown in what is well-known, and an infinite potential to finite things." In this context, ceramics is what makes her feel the value of everyday life. Consequently, she thinks that if people look inside objects, even the tiny things are connected to the entire world. That is why even things that are neglected or that are considered worthless are so special to her.

 

Yaerin's work is inspired by the natural surroundings of where she used to live in South Korea, which included mountains, rivers, and lots of snow in the winter. She creates ceramics that explore the complexity of nature and translate her experiences and emotions from that familiar natural world of her heritage into her work. Yaerin believes that natural elements such as rocks, trees, grass, moss, and flowers represent a duality, such as life and death, worth and worthlessness, beauty and impermanence, ephemerality and eternity. Therefore, her work blurs the boundaries of fixed meanings of objects through this ambiguity, providing new possibilities for the imagination.

 

Her practice approach involves layering multiple layers of porcelain and glaze onto a surface, creating an ambiguous texture, and melting gemstones at high temperatures. This process explores the boundary of metamorphosis by attempting to shift the fixed context of objects with worthlessness and impermanence meanings in everyday life, enabling audiences to view them from a different perspective.