GALLERIES

A Selection of Mimi’s work is available from Cavaliero Finn, Gallery 155, Gallery M Platform and New Craftsman Gallery

You can also contact me to discuss commissions directly.

PORTFOLIO

REVIEWS

RULE BREAKING: REFLECTING PASTS - IMAGINING FUTURES

by Tessa Peters

Mimi Joung’s deep understanding of materials and techniques, along with her considerable knowledge of the history of ceramics, enables her to work both with and against the traditions and conventions of her medium. Her approach is systematic and rigorous as much as it is inventive and intuitive, the resulting works being distillations of multiple references and experiences.

A primary source of inspiration for the experimental vessels Joung has created for the Rule breaking exhibition are the distinctive local salt-glazed jugs in the collection of the Stadtmuseum Siegburg, which date from medieval times. She admires the ability of Siegburg’s earlier generations of potters to estimate the litre or half litre capacity of their wares, and this led to her decision to use the measure of half a litre of porcelain clay slip to create each of her sixty-four responses to them. Her jugs, with their lace-like, paper-thin walls make up a large installation that is set out in two groups of thirty-two – one group monochrome, the other polychrome - amounting to a total of sixty-four unique vessels. Three much larger vessels that stand adjacent to the installation represent yet another response to examples of salt-glazed pottery in the museum’s collection.

Joung’s ambitious body of work also has a literary source, namely Hermann Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game. She discerns echoes of Hesse’s exploration of Eastern philosophy within the collections of the museum and in their presentation of the evolution of ceramic design, as new influences, possibilities and knowledge arrived in Europe from Asia and other distant regions of the world. Her works also have parallels to the content of the novel: On his path to becoming Magister Ludi of the Glass Bead Game, protagonist Joseph Knecht seeks ideas and influences beyond the elite society of Castalia. In one such episode he spends time with a wise hermit, the Elder Brother, who assists him in his study of Chinese culture and spirituality. An account of the Elder Brother’s use of yarrow stalks to consult the I Ching or Book of Changes details a process of counting, then dividing the stalks into two bundles or groups, then more counting and, after repeating the process several times, three bundles remain to point towards one of the I Ching’s sixty-four hexagrams or signs – these numbers can be recognised as those governing Mimi Joung’s installation, and the three large jugs that stand in relation to it. Hesse conveys the Elder Brother’s manipulation of the yarrow stalks as being “performed … with economical motions and quiet agility … practised thousands of times and brought to a high degree of virtuoso dexterity,” which bears a striking similarity to Joung’s skilled manipulation of clay.

A fuller appreciation of the work lies in an understanding of her technique. She starts by using a slip trailing tool to write with porcelain slip on the surface of a plaster block, which absorbs excess moisture. Once the lines of script become firm enough to manipulate, she starts to coil and develop the open framework of the form, a process that – in the case of the large vessels - can take from dawn to dusk without a break, as it must be completed in a single day. Whereas each of the installation’s sixty-four jugs is composed of a repeated word or phrase relating to one of the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, each of the three large vessels is composed from the verses of one of Knecht’s posthumously published poems from his student years. Both the rhythmic structure and inherent meanings of Joung’s clay script, when transformed into the alternative code of three-dimensional form, have the effect of helping us to consider things anew.

The forms of the jugs in the monochrome group most closely resemble the shapes of the original Siegburg pots. Perhaps they can be taken to represent the intellectual concepts and organization of the Game, with its focused mediation on the content, origin and meaning of a symbol? In contrast, the polychrome jugs break with tradition, their freely inventive, individualistic forms seeming to counter ideas of the past. As with the character Fritz Tegularius in Hesse’s novel, they represent an opposing tendency, a future of individualism and rule-breaking - a future anticipated by Hesse that, arguably, may now have come to pass. If the monochrome vessels are concentrated and methodical in their systematic focus, their polychrome antitheses radiate the energetic eccentricity of new forces to be reckoned with.

Another work, a large-scale composition of glazed porcelain and painted MDF shapes is arranged across one of the gallery’s walls. Its visual elements correspond to the shapes of the bases of the jugs of the installation, offering a bird’s eye view of them that otherwise would not be seen. In this the sixty-four hexagram jugs are translated into another visual code. It is a work that further develops the artist’s language of symbols, in all its combinations and possibilities, and in a way broadly comparable to the evolution of the Glass Bead Game. Through the rule-breaking and remaking that she undertakes in this expansive, imaginative and thought-provoking body of work, Joung offers cause for reflection on the ever-changing character of life and the factors that have a bearing on it.

SHADOWS OF YES AND NO

In her new body of work Shadows of Yes and No, Mimi Joung repeats the same words Yes and No to create various wall and freestanding works in varying shades of grey. The work builds on her interest in Dansaekhwa, the Korean monochrome movement, which reconciles the influence of western modernism on Korean artistic culture.

The movement highlighted the post-war struggle within Korea over national identity, belonging and tradition. By using repetitive patterns and gestures, each artist attempted to create an aesthetic style that was universal and belonged to no one.

Her pieces, which she develops and names based on her feelings towards human relationships and emotions, use the repeated form of yes and no to generate sculptural works that ask us to think about the shortest and hardest but perhaps most powerful words in our language.

As you look at her work, she asks you to not simply enjoy the form but also to reflect on your own emotional response. What makes us feel ready to say yes and what drives us to say no? Is life black and white or a more subtle reflection on transience and beauty?

Cavaliero Finn

by Juliana Cavaliero and Debra Finn

We have long admired the work of Korean artist, Mimi Joung, adding her porcelain sculptures to the Cavaliero Finn portfolio back in 2019.

This year we have seen Mimi's work grow from strength to strength as she continues to add increasingly complex pieces to her Watermelon Sugar series, based on the slim novel of the same title by American author Richard Brautigan. We have also seen the emergence of an exciting new body of work inspired by the poetry of T S Eliot which Cavaliero Finn debuted in June at Artefact, the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour's inaugural contemporary craft show. In this spotlight we take a closer look at both these series and find out more about this talented artist's use of language and literature in her joyfully coloured ceramic sculptures.

We are delighted to have two new sculptures by Mimi for our latest collaborative show Crafting a Difference at the Argentine Ambassador's Official Residence organised as part of London Craft Week (4-10th October 2021).

Mimi has been working on her In Watermelon Sugar series for a number of years, turning each chapter of this short novel into the most incredible porcelain sculptures. In this latest work, the artist brings alive 'The Girl With The Lantern' chapter, literally writing out the chapter using porcelain slip, coiling it all together, starting and ending each sculpture where the chapter begins and finishes. The work is as much about the inside as the outside and, like with all of Mimi's work, the interplay of light and colour works its magic on the emotions.

In this chapter in Brautigan's novel In Watermelon Sugar, the start of a relationship is explored, where the main character ‘No Name’ catches sight of the girl with the lantern whom we later find out is Pauline.

Mimi explains what it is about this classic 60's novel that continues to inspire her work.

"To me the novel speaks of our dream worlds and the surreal landscape with in the book reflects our personal displacement within imagined utopias and dystopias. Just like so many of our visions and dreams, it collapses in the fire of reality. In the same way, my formal and unfired work collapses in the heat of the kiln. In the work I consider, What is utopia and what is dystopia? Is the desire for perfection a flawed search for utopia? And is the twisted form closer to the real utopia that includes our imperfect lives? "

Mimi's work is often derived from literature and the artist's personal response to her readings. She enjoys the nature of storytelling embedded in writing - whether it is philosophical, playful or prophetic. She takes these qualities and uses her hands to mould a visual story from the writing. The artworks can be read as landscapes or containers, that hold a narrative that then leaks out into the world through the hearts of her audience. 

Mimi believes that colour can play tricks on us, bringing a new layer of meaning to her work and to our perceptions. The story itself can be dark and dystopian, describing the nature of human existence, but colours can draw us towards a new perspective, reflecting the warmth and joy of life that helps us to overcome our negative and contradictory selves.

ENTWINED REPEATING

by Dan Phillips

‘Entwined repeating' is the title of an exhibition by three artists working with various materials and cultural frameworks. It explores the ‘emotional charge’ which lives within these women.

entwine - Wind or twist together; interweave: they lay entwined in each other's arms | figurative : the nations' histories were closely entwined. Her hair was entwined with ropes of pearls: wind round, twist round, coil round, wrap round, weave, intertwine, interlink, interlace, interweave, interthread, crisscross, entangle, tangle; twine, link, lace, braid, plait, knit, wreathe; literary pleach. ORIGIN Old English twīn ‘thread, linen’, from the Germanic base of twi-‘two’; related to Dutch twijn.

repeat - She repeated her story in a flat monotone: say again, restate, reiterate, go through again, go over again, run through again, iterate, rehearse, recapitulate; informal recap; rare reprise, ingeminate. Children can remember and repeat large chunks of text: recite, quote, reproduce; echo, parrot, regurgitate; say again, restate; informal trot out. Steele had been invited to repeat his work in a scientific environment: do again, redo, replicate, duplicate, perform again. The episodes from the first two series were constantly repeated: rebroadcast, rerun, reshow, replay. 1 (of a firearm) capable of firing several shots in succession without reloading. 2 (of a pattern) recurring uniformly over a surface. ORIGIN Late Middle English: from Old French repeter, from Latin repetere, from re- ‘back’ + petere ‘seek’.

According to Derrida, we find that repetition conceals a paradoxical, dual desire. Derrida tells us about an incessant, nostalgic searching. He demonstrates the desire to return to one’s origins, a longing for home, what he calls an ‘archival malady’ that, in spite of its preservative purpose, ultimately conceals memory in order to negate that which is discursive. This is why Bae’s attempts at repeated series result in nothing being visible. It becomes completely indecipherable in a tangle of strings that creates a gestalt; a line of feelings, a camouflage and an amalgamation of the visible that transforms it into something enigmatic.

In reality, Bae’s body of works serves as a self-portrait, with a narcissistic strategy that does not take place in her body but in her history. Bae’s work offers, in her memory, recreating actions, repetition and the first time are the same as repetition at the last time, since the inherent strangeness of every first time simultaneously transforms it to a last time. In other words, every time is different. Therefore it is implied that Bae’s work is a continuous rereading, a reunion. A repetition, but not one that is obsessed with the illusory shiny surface of what we think of as new. On the other hand, her work also serves as an engraving, a record, a mirror that absorbs, reflects and breaks everything.

Mimi Joung and Yeon-Kyoung Sim find their working method very similar to Bae’s. Although they are visually different, they are ultimately obsessed with their own artistic practice.

Joung believes obsession is a synonym for anxiety, an inclination for something, a focused state of mind. All three artists agree that obsession can not exist without memory. It’s an obsession with fixed ideas that persistently and stubbornly bothers the intellect. Everything these artists are doing is based on the instance and repetition of themes that make these artists’ works into a meeting place, a place for ingenious reasoning, which ultimately denies the authenticity of origin and serves as an undeniable prerequisite for creativity.

No artist collaboration is ever either a natural or linear progression towards a higher state of aesthetic perfection. A collaboration can seem to take you backwards even when you are meant to be progressing at double or triple speed. Learning to collaborate is often perceived as a contradiction. It is assumed to be as natural as breathing. However, submitting to the needs of others, presenting your own within a shared space, and then allowing the dialogue to shape the outcome can test the limit of an individual’s faith and mutuality. To develop ideas in an open environment is to risk seeing them in a naked and informed manner. It may reveal their greatest potential but also expose their deepest flaws. The entwining nature of collaboration is both liberating and suffocating.

John Berger’s assertion that all art that is based on the intensive study of nature ultimately changes the way we view, either by clearly affirming an already established approach or by suggesting a new one. Continuing with Berger, we are basically talking about experience, about events that can be defined on the basis of their relationship to one another.

“I am a searcher... I always was... and I still am... searching for the missing piece.” Louise Bourgeois

Bae, Joung and Sim are all searching. And as Eliot recognised they will not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

MUTE - SCAPE

by Phoebe Cummings

Foucault defines language as "...a fragmented mass, its enigma renewed in every interval, which combines here and there with the forms of the world and becomes interwoven with them: so much so that all these elements, taken together, form a network of marks in which each of them may play, and does in fact play, in relation to all the others, the role of content or of sign, that of secret or of indicator."[1] Mimi Joung's exhibition presents a collection of objects revealing fragments of stories: of daily life, of human relationships, of place and displacement. The use of materials and working process is a careful language, one that is both intuitive and informed. Born in South Korea, Mimi Joung has also lived in the U.S and the UK. The fractured nature of everyday life seems to underpin the works on display. Parallels to writing may be drawn from the hand-pinched clay pieces, which are suggestive of early methods of writing such as tallies and tokens. Joung describes "My daydreams, anxieties and traces of forgotten words are kneaded into the clay." The limitless possibilities of words rearranged to form meaning echoes the repetition and singularity evident in the making of these objects day after day, like a diary. Joung references Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, where "Both narrator and reader seek resolution within the fragmented non-definitions of his imaginary places. But this questioning always leads to future collections of beginnings and alternatives that never resolves." Similarly, Joung's work seems to thrive in this state of un-resolve. Most of the objects are constructed from groups of smaller pieces of ceramic, all of which are in some way contained: in bindings, found objects or in the precarious balance of their form. This provides a resolution of sorts, enabling both beginning and end, though simultaneously the work has neither. It is, then apt that this work is presented in a space that was formerly a Church, the building itself a container and vessel. A memorial tablet on the wall is inscribed with the words "Until the day break". It is evocative of this dual sense of past and future, reflection and anticipation. One, small piece in the Day Collector series, takes a found tin and binds it with a continuous loop of hot glass. The process is direct, and it is with this ease and simplicity that Joung manages to contain a complexity of thoughts. In many ways these thoughts lead back to the title and the idea of something mute- something unheard or unsaid. There is a silence in writing, of speaking without sound. The physical remains, whether ink on a page or the manipulation of other materials may be returned to again and again, to be experienced in new ways. Mute-Scape succeeds as a similar place for return and departures.

[1] Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, Routledge, London, 2002 (first published as (Les mots et les choses, Editions Gallimard, 1966)

DAY COLLECTOR

by Phoebe Cummings

ON A CROWDED TRAIN I FEEL AN ELBOW DIG INTO MY ribs, I step back, onto the foot of another body, which recoils in to a neighbouring passenger.
No one looks up. Apologies are mumbled down the carriage like quilted dominoes. I recall this scenario (like countless similar experiences on countless daily journeys).

There is a resonance, in seeing here, the intense groupings of what, essentially, remain isolated parts; in the tight bindings of thread and found containers; in the cascading movements held in porcelain; in the act of there making day after day. Mimi Joung's exhibition, Mute-Scape, speaks about daily life, about life in cities.The title for the exhibition immediately brings connotations of landscape and the objects themselves may be interpreted as such.

However, where in painting landscapes may appear to continue beyond the frame, here there is a constant awareness of limit.The viewer is never inside the landscape as a distance and separation is always present. The landscape is contained: the viewer displaced.

Joung's use of materials and working process is a careful language, one that is both intuitive and informed. Ceramics and glass provide a means to explore a story that is distinctly Joung's own but one that belongs firmly to contemporary culture on a wide scale. Born in South Korea, she has also lived in the US and the UK. Living between many places, as for many people, becomes a place in itself.

The reference to collecting made in the Day Collector series may exist in direct connection to this understanding of the fragmentary context of everyday life.Joung describes, "My daydreams, anxieties and traces of forgotten words are kneaded into the clay."1 The making process in much of Joung's work becomes part of daily routines, almost like a diary, where thoughts are written into the making of objects.

This process sits closely to the significance of collecting and collections. Baudrillard discusses "By breaking up time, our 'habitual' patterns dispel the
anxiety-provoking aspect of the temporal continuum and of the absolute singularity of events... between the world's irreversible evolution and ourselves, objects interpose a discontinuous, classifiable, reversible screen which can be reconstituted at will, a segment of the world which belongs to us, responding to our hands and minds."2

Joung's working process, based on the return to a daily act, provides a space for the fragment to exist in its singularity.3 The viewer may move back and forth within the collection, for a linear experience is not imposed. She references Italo Calvino's writing, Invisible Cities, where "Both narrator and reader seek resolution within the fragmented non-definitions of his imaginary places. But this questioning always leads to future collections of beginnings and alternatives that never resolve".4

Similarly, Joung's work seems to thrive in this state of un-resolve.

Parallels to writing can also be drawn in the objects themselves. The hand-pinched clay pieces are suggestive of early forms of writing, such as tallies and tokens. With Day Collector, the process of making echoes a kind of writing, though in previous works Joung has explored this connection explicitly, literally writing with clay slip: the texts becoming a collection of individual objects. The limitless possibilities of words rearranged in relation to one another, again explores the notion of repetition and singularity.

Foucault speaks of language as "...a fragmented mass, its enigma renewed in every interval, which combines here and there with the forms of the world and becomes interwoven with them: so much so that all these elements, taken together, form a network of marks in which each of them may play, and does in fact play, in relation to all the others, the role of content or of sign, that of secret or of indicator".5
Most of the objects in this series are constructed from stick-like pieces of ceramic. All of these groups are in some way contained, either in everyday objects, in their soft bindings or in the precarious balance of their form. The pieces titled Thicket present dense collections, some bound together with elastic bands others in a type of wool. In its definition, 'Thicket' suggests a defined area of growth, somehow independent of its surroundings.

The elastic bands create a flexible restriction, like ligaments, providing the strength and tension for the groups to stand. Those bound in yarn are held more tightly, but acquire a hazy definition in their soft exterior.

Containment provides a resolution of sorts, enabling both beginning and end, though simultaneously the work has neither. Other pieces make use of found containers all of which show traces of use, which become vessels both for their past and the new stories they now contain. It is, then, apt that this work is presented in a space that was formerly a Church, the building itself a container and vessel.

A memorial tablet on the wall is inscribed with the words "Until the day break".

It is evocative of this dual sense of past and future, reflection and anticipation. Within the architectural space, the objects are presented at eye level, where they look directly back at the viewer suggesting their containment of a psychological
space.

One, small piece in the Day Collector series, takes a found tin and binds it with a continuous loop of hot glass. The process is direct, and it is with this ease and simplicity that Joung manages to contain a complexity of thoughts.

In many ways these thoughts lead back to the title and the idea of something mute - something unheard or unsaid, just as Joung describes the process of kneading "forgotten words" into the clay. There is a silence in writing, of speaking without sound.
The physical remains of writing, whether ink on a page or the manipulation of other materials, may be returned to again and again, to be experienced in new ways.

REFERENCES:
1. Taken from Mimi Joung artist statement 2006.
2. Baurillard, Jean. The System of Objects. Translation by
James Benedict, Verso, London, 1996 (first published as
Les systemes des objets, Edition Gallimard, France, 1968).
3. Drawing on theories explored in Baudrillard, Jean,
Fragments. Translation Chris Turner, foreward by Mike
Gane, Routledge, London and New York, 2004 (first
published as D'un Fragment L'autre, Editions Albin
Michel S.A, Paris, 2001.
4. Taken from Mimi Joung artist statement 2006.
5. Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things, Routledge, Lon-
don, 2002. (first published as Les mots et les choses, edi-
tions Gallimard, 1966).