Jinsik Yoo: Palimpsest

Resident Artist Show Featuring works by Jinsik Yoo

"Palimpsest adapts traditional funerary ritual into a personal mythology to think about complexities of lineage, memory, and belonging. In Korea, 제사 (jesa) is a ceremony in which we care for the spirits of our ancestors, offering prayers and food on an altar and burning incense into smoke. In every family line, the oldest son must perform these rituals. I am the only son in my family, and will perform these rituals eventually. But I am queer. I am not expected to have a son in a traditional family. My ancestors die with me.

The figures in this show are messengers between me and my ancestors, between this world and the one beyond. I envision the action of making these sculptures as performing another kind of ritual with fundamental elements. Shaping clay (earth and water), then firing it (air and flame). This method of creation is an intentional part of the ritual: the temporary smoke of the incense in jesa acts as a timer, opening the door for the ancestors’ ghosts, and closing it when the smoke burns out. Permanently marked by smoke through the firing process, these messengers are able to hold the door open.

Formed from clay, these figures could outlast us all. With this series, I want to create the possibility for ceramic’s long life to carry on a kind of jesa. This work neighbors tradition while imagining new ways to care for and communicate with the next world. Though tradition would say I am bound to lose my ancestors, these messengers carry on a new kind of legacy, acting as the palimpsest of the title: writing my messengers over old lines that still shine through."

Jinsik Yoo is a figurative ceramic sculptor from Daejon, South Korea. He received his BFA in graphic design from Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea. He then worked as a graphic designer before returning to Konkuk University as a special graduate student studying ceramics. Yoo then moved to the United States in 2017 to pursue his MFA at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He has exhibited and presented nationally and internationally. His studio practice involves translating photographs into paintings, which are then spliced and reassembled into three dimensional forms.

See what the works look like installed below! All installation images were shot by the amazing photographer Alexander Mansour!