Hae Won Sohn

At once familiar and futuristic, the organic sculptures of South Korean–born sculptor Hae Won Sohn can be deceiving. Conceived in a palette of soft pastels, the seemingly fragmented objects are in fact carefully cast. It’s been a breakout year for the artist with her first solo show this summer at Baltimore Clayworks, the Maryland institution where she’s in the midst of a long-term residency. Trained at Seoul’s Kookmin University and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, Sohn was also recently spotlighted in a two-person show at Baltimore’s Mono Practice gallery. Up next is an exhibition at Emmanuel Barbault Gallery in January 2020.

Personal Style: “Through repetitional mold-making and casting, I blur the distinction between empty volumes and filled volumes, voids and masses, negative spaces and positive ones. The difference begins to fade and at a certain point disappears.”

Hae Won Sohn, Untitled (The Rose of Versailles), 2019. Photo: Yassine El Mansouri

“Hae Won Sohn’s sculptures are eerie in their semblance to the corporeal. I find something innately evocative in these unusual shapes, at once beautiful and grotesque. It’s as if they’ve taken a form I know well and inverted it or presented it as a fragment.” —Heidi Zuckerman

Hae Won Sohn, Untitled (Spring Tornado), 2019. Photo: Yassine El Mansouri
Hae Won Sohn, Hiatus #7, 2018. Photo: Yassine El Mansouri

 A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2019 Late Fall Issue under the headline “Galerie Emerging Artist Award.” Subscribe to the magazine.

Newsletter

Sign up to receive the best in art, design, and culture from Galerie

Thank You
Your first newsletter will arrive shortly.