Rahee Yoon

Rahee Yoon brings her experience in metalwork, textiles, ceramics, woodworking and resin-casting to create enigmatic objects that sit at the intersection of art and design.

Yoon studied arts and crafts at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul and opened her own studio in 2017. Since then, she has been experimenting with a wide array of materials, particularly acrylic. Invented in the 1930s, acrylic was prized by designers for its translucent, lightweight, and durable qualities. Yoon is inspired both by this side of its history – especially its application in the designs of Arne Jacobsen – as well as its association with minimalist artists such as Donald Judd. After seven years of research into the material, she prefers to think of acrylic not as a noun, but as an adjective or verb – a state of being – such as ‘to permeate deeply’ or to ‘subtly refract’.

Yoon’s ongoing series Block seeks to explore the potential of her principal material by setting delicate forms of colorful acrylic in hazy translucent blocks, as if they are floating in ice or fog. Often in shades of red or blue, the acrylic appears to diffuse to softer hues, as if waves are flowing through the structure. In other pieces, organic matter such as wood is set in the material. The resin’s imperfect translucency serves to both reveal and mask the center. “The blurred core of each piece communicates ideas of boundaries, diffusion and empty spaces,” she says. “The title Block not only indicates the base material of the artwork, but also represents how the series evolves from its simplest form into a multifaceted structure.”