September 6 – 31, 2013
Opening reception September 6, 6:00 – 9:00

Musical performance by Tae Won Yu & Victoria Salvador

Land Gallery is proud to present the recent work of artist, designer and musician Tae Won Yu.

During the last two years Tae Won Yu has been mastering the medium of paper sculpture in a fresh and exhilarating way. Utilizing cardboard, recycled packaging and painted paper, Tae has meticulously reconstructed elements of the ordinary world in a tableau of sculptures and photographs that are at once dreamlike, yet intimately familiar.

Bringing together his varied sensibilities, the exhibition presents an interplay of sculpture, collage, illustration and photography at its most playful. 

A musical performance by Tae Won Yu’s new band, POSES will accompany the opening reception on September 6, 6:00 – 9:00.

We sat down with him to talk about his process and his upcoming show. 

Why paper sculpture? How did you come to this new medium?

In my day job I was designing a children’s book that featured robots made out of recycled materials. Getting my hands back into folding and gluing paper awoke something very familiar in me. As a kid I used to make paper toys and robots all the time.

Tell me about your process? Do you sketch out a scene and then recreate it? 

I don’t make any plans, these pieces are mostly improvised or just barely sketched before I start cutting and gluing.

I try to allow the paper to become what it’s best suited for. I start with one part and it’ll have a conversation with another part and if they like each other they are joined together and they invite another texture or material to come in and so it goes.

So many of your sculptures are not replicas of real world objects, instead they have a child-like quality to them.

It’s true, I’ve always allowed accidents to be integral to the work. I also like to use ordinary materials and very cheap paper. There’s a special quality that results when you treat a throwaway with respect and craftsmanship and it’s elevated. It’s like alchemy—transforming dross into something refined and otherworldly.

It’s remarkable how these pieces provoke such an emotional response from people. It really seems to make them happy.

It certainly makes me happy to make them, it reminds me being a kid and trying to figure out the world by drawing it. There’s something so intimate about paper (especially mismatched and glued together paper) that’s lacking in digital or printed work.

The best response I heard to my work is this person who wanted to go to bed and snuggle with the paper tape recorder.