Yun Choi

Crystaline glazes are a pinnacle of craftmanship, a delicate cultivation of chemical elements, and yet they appear on the surface of ceramics as something organic, a natural beauty beyond art. For three months, Yun Choi immersed herself in the alchemy of zinc mixed with alkalic glazes, trying to grasp how and why the crystals grow – or fail to do so. She experimented with firing curves, soaking, rapid cooling, re-heating, with manganese, copper, cobalt, nickel and iron oxide for different colours. The resulting tests are precious objects in themselves. Cuts in the clay to promote crystal growth resemble lines in the palm of a hand. This connects to the remote controls Choi made to ‘activate’ the larger flat screens that reflect her research or mirror their surroundings like dormant LCDs. As a side project, she turned shavings from the thin clay slabs into marine-life objects with glorious celadon reduction glazes.