Saint Breeders

Yee Soo-kyung is known for collecting shattered pieces of celadon deemed trash by master potters. She assembles the shards in a random fashion and adheres them together with 24K gold leaf to create a bulbous sculpture. At her solo exhibit at Atelier Hermès, the artist also makes liberal use of gold leaf, but uses it to cover the surface of a round, ordinary stone. Lookswise, the golden stone appears dull compared to the celadon sculpture, but the stone too, has a backstory. Yee presents one of the two stones she received from a Buddhist monk from Gangjin gun, and the clues to the almost mythical tale can be found in the title of the work. And “You Were There” makes you wonder where the other stone is.