Jennie Jieun Lee's Ceramic Sculptures Covered in Abstract Paintings.

Marta, 2019.

Lynda, 2016.

Queen Bee, 2016.

Untitled No. 23, 2016.

Cough syrup on the Lips, 2019.

Seoul-born and Long Beach, California-based artist Jennie Jieun Lee makes some seriously engaging ceramic sculptures. Having graduated in ceramics from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 1999, Lee worked in fashion for many years before rediscovering her love of clay. Lee’s work is deeply personal, expressing her experience of being an immigrant, a minority in America, and her personal evolution in coming to embrace all that makes her who she is.

Formally alluding to abstract expressionist paintings, Lee’s work encompasses small wheel-thrown vessels, hand-built slabs, and organic forms that are punctured and malformed. There is no clear delineation regarding whether the deformity is intentional, or whether Lee embraces random gestures and perceived imperfections throughout her process. The resulting ceramic forms present as at once crude and delicate, their morphing features mimicking, articulating and navigating her own emotions and psyche. Rich, colourful glazes bring the busts to life, dripping and imperfect, evocative of human experience.

Onibaba, 2019.

Lee’s most recent solo show, her first since 2015, is currently on show at New York’s Martos Gallery in Chinatown. Titled ‘Sizzling Gouba and Long Beach’, the works are inspired by the artist’s personal history and other moments of introspection. In the title, ‘Sizzling Gouba’ references a rice dish that arrives at the table loudly crackling, one which Lee remembers receiving on family outings with embarrassment.

Lee creates a psychosomatic expression of the past, re-contextualizing the classic form of the body, or vessel, through a series of sculpting, embossing, drawing, printing, and painting works. Drawing visitors into the main gallery is a giant house covered in blades of grass that depict an overgrown and unkempt lawn, a nod to Lee’s memories of childhood. Further in, the gallery is filled with ceramic paintings and a jumble of sculptures. Lee also has a line of functional ceramics’ Glazemoods’, encompassing mugs, plates, bowls and vessels painted in her abstract expressionist style.