Janny Baek's Ceramics Look Like They're Still Evolving - Yanko Design

"What makes Baek's ceramics so compelling is the feeling that the firing process didn't quite finish the job. The sculptures look caught mid-transformation, as though another hour in the kiln might have resolved them into something more familiar. Instead, they hold their ambiguity like a posture. That deliberate incompleteness is one of the most interesting creative choices an artist can make, and Baek has built an entire body of work around it."

"The pieces gather across the gallery space like inhabitants of an ecosystem you've never visited but somehow recognize. Some forms open outward like blossoms. Others stretch upward with limbs that suggest wings, or stems, or shells. None of them fully commit to being any one thing, and that's exactly the point."

"That architectural background isn't incidental. You can see it in the structural logic of the pieces, which begin with coiled bases and build upward through successive additions of clay, each element branching from the last. The result is less like sculpting and more like construction."

Janny Baek's upcoming solo exhibition, Life Forms, opens at Joy Machine gallery in Chicago from March 20 through May 9, 2026. Her ceramic sculptures invite close inspection and evoke living organisms through forms that remain deliberately ambiguous, never fully committing to a single identity. The pieces suggest blossoms, wings, stems, and shells simultaneously. Baek's path to ceramics is unconventional, beginning with studies at Rhode Island School of Design, followed by animation and toy design work, then a graduate degree in architecture from Harvard and years designing high-end residential spaces. During the pandemic, she returned to clay, establishing a studio in her Flatiron District architecture office. Her architectural background influences the structural logic of her pieces, which build upward through successive clay additions, creating forms that appear caught mid-transformation.

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