EMILY YONG BECK
SOLO EXHIBITION
SPOONFUL OF SUGAR
SOLO EXHIBITION (PROJECT GALLERY)
EXHIBITION DATES: 9TH APR 2022 to 30TH APR 2022
OPENING RECEPTION: SAT, APR 9TH FROM 7:00 – 10:00 PM
GALLERY HOURS: TUES – SAT / 1 PM – 6 PM
NEW IMAGE ART. 7920 SANTA MONICA BLVD. LOS ANGELES. CA. 90046
New Image Art is pleased to present “Spoonful Of Sugar“ the debut solo exhibition of Chicago-based ceramicist Emily Yong Beck. For her first exhibition in Los Angeles, the artist will exhibit a diverse array of ceramic vessels that border on the aesthetically sweet to the physically obscene. Join us for the opening reception on April 9th, 2022, from 7-10 PM.
What is behind the veil of all that is cute? Emily Yong Beck delves into this layered and messy question by examining the perverse histories that have influenced the current hegemony of adorableness. Her medium of expressing this means of conditioning is the same medium that has historically perpetuated this type of propaganda, art, but more specifically, ceramics. She sculpts opulently cute vessels and figures to illuminate past and present injustices. The more one gazes into the glazed plush periwinkles, bubblegum pinks, and swirls of teal, the more Yong Beck hypnotizes the viewer into a frenzy of sweetness, the more the effects of this mechanism take hold, now we too experience the power of cuteness. This visual strategy has been a tool since the beginning of colonialism, where empires such as France, notably the Savres Factory, weaponized Rococo art by using white porcelain figures in pushing their agenda of white supremacy. Their means of subtly erasing their racism and violence was through this stylization. These oppressive devices used to erase past atrocities by numerous colonial empires have taken new forms today. In 2022, the ultimate form of cuteness could be none other than the Japanese mass phenomenon of Kawaii, which for Yong Beck, who is of Korean lineage, is the greatest psi-op of the times. In the artist’s eyes, Japan’s success in “cute washing” culture is a way to obscure their imperialism and crimes in most of Asia. To bring to light the magnitude of this global suppression, Yong Beck subverts popular Japanese anime characters while using traditionally inspired Korean pottery techniques. By applying the same method of deploying cuteness to her saccharine ornate ceramics, she reveals its psychological and aesthetic power while acknowledging the history of the material.
As a ceramicist of the NOW, she forges goopy tender pieces of Hello Kitty, Tweety Bird, and Mickey Mouse, which aesthetically reflect the contemporary ceramics movement of the post-millennium. This school of gloppy contemporary cartoonism in ceramics started with Magdalena Suarez Frimkess in the pioneering epicenter of ceramics, California. It evolved over the past decade with ceramists such as; Sharif Farrag, Diana Yesenia Alvarado, and Alake Shilling to name a few. Emily Yong Beck now brings her raw, tactile ability in the art of contemporary ceramics. Her candied vessels of cartoons leave you with the bittersweet taste of reckoning.