Jongjin Park Honored with Loewe Craft Prize for Innovative Ceramic Art
Embracing the Unseen: Park's Ceramic Mastery in "Strata of Illusion"
The Award-Winning Creation: "Strata of Illusion" Takes Center Stage
Jongjin Park has achieved significant recognition, securing the Loewe Craft Prize 2026 for his remarkable artwork, "Strata of Illusion." This ceramic masterpiece, showcased at the National Gallery Singapore, blurs the lines between a seating form, a geological specimen, and a compressed textile. Crafted from porcelain, paper, stains, and glazes, its unique structure features a central indentation and vibrant, layered hues that create a landscape of folded textures and compacted lines.
From Fragile Paper to Enduring Porcelain: A Visionary Process
The genesis of this award-winning piece lies in its ingenious use of paper. Park meticulously coats sheets of paper with porcelain slip, imbued with carefully blended pigments. These treated sheets are then folded, stacked, and compressed into solid blocks, which undergo a firing process. During this stage, the paper disintegrates, leaving an indelible imprint of its original form within the hardened porcelain. The final artwork retains the delicate nuances of compression and creasing, transmuting a delicate material into a robust ceramic sculpture.
Unveiling the Material's Narrative: Porcelain Echoes Paper's Past
The profound impact of Jongjin Park's "Strata of Illusion" is found in the transparency of its creation process. Upon close examination, the surface reveals a sequence of pressed strata, with defined edges and recessed areas that evoke sediment, textiles, cardboard, and cross-sections of earth. A rich palette of muted blues, fiery reds, subtle yellows, earthy greens, and lustrous dark tones converges in uneven bands, imbuing the piece with a substantial, almost cushioned quality, while preserving the unyielding weight of fired clay.
Geological Inspirations and Artistic Translations
Park's methodology is deeply influenced by his observations of geological formations near his studio. Rather than depicting landscapes pictorially, he delves into the gradual processes of accumulation, pressure, and the passage of time, translating these elemental forces into a distinctive ceramic technique. The artwork intrinsically embodies this conceptual framework. Each fold signifies a deliberate artistic choice, and every colored layer marks a distinct stage of coating, stacking, and firing. What appears soft and fibrous is, in reality, vitrified porcelain.
The Art of Disappearance: Crafting Ambiguity and Transformation
The title, "Strata of Illusion," eloquently captures the core paradox of the artwork. Its surface evokes a sense of flexibility, resembling paper or fabric, yet the piece is permanently fixed in ceramic form. The chair-like indentation invites a tactile interpretation, but the object maintains its sculptural integrity, appearing more like a condensed landscape than a utilitarian seat. This inherent ambiguity imbues the work with its captivating allure. Park skillfully employs craft to simultaneously embody two contrasting states: the initial softness of the raw material and the solidified permanence of the finished piece.
Contemporary Craft and the Quest for Material Truth
This sense of metamorphosis resonates deeply within the context of the Loewe Craft Prize, an arena where contemporary craft is celebrated for its patience, material insight, and willingness to take technical risks. Park's work doesn't rely on embellishment or grand scale to convey its message. It remains intimate, a dialogue between the artist's hand and the kiln, using the deceptively simple combination of paper and porcelain to provoke questions about how we perceive material authenticity.
Jongjin Park's Vision: Bridging Disciplines in Collectible Design
Based in the Republic of Korea, Jongjin Park holds advanced degrees from Kookmin University and Cardiff Metropolitan University, and currently serves as an Assistant Professor in Craft & Collectible Design at Seoul Women's University. His expansive practice traverses ceramics, craft research, and collectible design, with recent collaborations spanning luxury, fashion, and automotive industries. In "Strata of Illusion," these diverse fields converge, resulting in a work that is both experimental and profoundly accessible.
Process as Narrative: The Intelligence of Matter
The piece also reflects a broader evolution within design culture, where the creative process has become as significant as the final outcome. Park's ceramic technique directly embeds the labor into the object, allowing the finished surface to bear the tangible evidence of folding, pressure, pigment application, and heat. In an era increasingly dominated by rapid fabrication and digital simulation, "Strata of Illusion" refocuses attention on the inherent intelligence of materials and the pivotal role of the hand in exploring their transformative potential.