Ceramic organisms to display in Chicago Artist Janny Baek is set to present Life Types, a brand-new exhibit of ceramic sculptures set to open on March 20th, 2026 at Happiness Maker gallery in Chicago. The works gather throughout the space as a series of small presences that appear midway through transformation. Some open outside like blossoms. Others stretch up with limbs that look like wings, stems, or shells. Each piece brings a peaceful sense of motion, as though the kinds continue to move even after the firing process has actually repaired them in location.
The exhibition introduces a speculative landscape constructed totally from ceramic. Baek’s sculptures hover between recognizable structures and unfamiliar ones, drawing loosely from plants, animals, and geological formations. Their shapes flex, flare, and extend through hand-built gestures, offering the works a sense of growth that feels incremental. Have a look at the varied works of Janny Baek ahead of the exhibit’s opening this Friday.
Janny Baek, oscillator 2021|images courtesy the artist an additive process by janny baek Artist Janny Baek’s course to ceramics moves across numerous disciplines, which layered background is visible in the building of the work. Born in Seoul and raised in Queens, she studied ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Style before working as a carver for animation and toy design. A later degree in architecture from Harvard University introduced a different scale of considering structure and assembly.
That style viewpoint shapes the sculptures throughout Life Types at Happiness Maker. Many begin with coiled bases that support rising bodies of clay. From there, extra areas collect and branch outward, giving the ceramic forms a structural reasoning comparable to little constructed environments. Each element appears to be included through succeeding gestures, which allows each work to grow slowly instead of arrive as a fixed image.
Janny Baek, feathered vessel, 2022 Clay as a believing product Color plays a main role in Janny Baek’s ceramics exhibit. She works with nerikomi, a Japanese ceramic technique that integrates layers of differently colored clay before forming the last object. When the material is cut or extended, marbled patterns and gradients move through the surface area of the sculpture.
For Janny Baek, these patterns carry conceptual meaning alongside their visual effect. ‘My product options are a method of thinking of natural procedures,’ she explains. ‘Color gradients as the continuous nature of change, a plethora of colors as prospective, abundance, and vigor, and patterns as signals and interactions.’ Within the ceramic body, color becomes part of the structure rather than a used surface.
Janny Baek, prismatic strolling cloud, 2023 Completely, Janny Baek’s ceramic sculptures check out as residents of an envisioned environment. Some appear upright and alert, while others plunge throughout the plinth as if reaching towards light or water. The surfaces ripple with bands of color that move through the clay like currents.
The works sit someplace between abstraction and representation. A viewer may see petals, plumes, or shells, though the types resist settling into a single identity. That obscurity offers the ceramic pieces their sense of life. They seem like organisms caught at an early stage of advancement.
Janny Baek, dream state, 2024
Janny Baek, wavelet, 2023