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’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

 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.