Hyunsuk Erickson "Yellow Thinggy"

Hyunsuk Erickson "Yellow Thinggy" 2026

Sculpture, Ceramic, Poly-fill, Wood branch, Yarn
Dimensions 38 x 14 inches
Unique
Signed on bottom

Hyunsuk Erickson is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture and installation, whose practice investigates the intersection of fiber-based traditions and contemporary material culture. Born in Korea and based in the United States, her work is shaped by a cross-cultural perspective that engages Korean spiritual sensibilities alongside American material contexts, examining identity as fluid, relational, and continuously in formation.

Erickson received her MFA from American University in Washington, DC, where she presented a large-scale, site-responsive thesis installation at the Katzen Arts Center. This experience established the foundation for her ongoing exploration of immersive environments that engage viewers through spatial awareness, movement, and sensory perception. Central to her practice is Thingumabob World, an evolving body of work composed of hybrid sculptural forms that integrate crocheted, knotted, and embroidered textiles with rigid materials such as ceramic and wood. These works articulate tensions between softness and structure, intuition and construction, and operate as open-ended forms that invite interpretive engagement.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at IA&A Hillyer Gallery (Washington, DC), Burlington City Arts (VT), and 636 Art Gallery (Seoul, Korea), and group exhibitions at the Kreeger Museum and Sandy Spring Museum. She has participated in residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Through her installation-based practice, Erickson develops immersive environments that foreground material relationships, spatial dynamics, and the evolving nature of cultural identity.

Artist Statement:

"For In Full Bloom, I present sculptural works from my ongoing project, Thingumabob World, which explores processes of growth, emergence, and transformation through material and form. My practice is grounded in the concept of primitive artificiality, where intuitive, hand-formed structures intersect with constructed and industrial elements. Through crocheting, wrapping, and stitching, I build layered textile surfaces over ceramic cores, creating hybrid forms that exist between softness and structure, containment and expansion.

The works in this exhibition take on the presence of budding forms—compressed, unfolding, and in transition. They suggest moments of bloom and rebirth, where growth is not linear or fixed, but cyclical and continuously evolving. Each piece carries a sense of becoming, as if caught between formation and transformation, reflecting the instability and fluidity of identity and material states.

Installed together, these forms function as a clustered field of related bodies, evoking a collective process of growth. Their repetition and variation create a rhythm that mirrors organic systems, while their constructed surfaces reveal the labor and accumulation embedded in their making.

Through this work, I explore how transformation can be both physical and perceptual—how forms can shift between familiar and unfamiliar states. In Full Bloom becomes not only a reference to natural cycles, but a condition of continual change, where materials, forms, and meanings are constantly unfolding and renewing." - Hyunsuk Erickson

Read more about her artwork and exhibitions on our website.