JAE KO
“During the 1990s in her initial explorations of water and paper—elements that have become integral to her sculptural practice,—Jae Ko (b. 1961, Korea) buried brown, utilitarian Kraft paper in the sand along the ocean’s tide line. She recovered the material only after the water had repeatedly washed over it, sculpting it into a new form that reflected its ability to both respond to and withstand nature’s impact. Over the past decade, Ko has continued to pair the physical force of water, and more recently gravity, with the activity of her own hand to transform paper into shapes “rich and strange.” Not unlike the “sea-change” described in Shakespeare’s phrases from The Tempest, it is the time-based metamorphosis at work in Ko’s art—by which an ephemeral and everyday substance becomes a thing with an aura more unusual and enduring—that transfixes observers.”
- Kristen Hileman
Jae Ko, JK383 Red, 2019, rolled paper and colored ink, 17 x 19 x 6.5 inches