CV

b. 1991 Hanam-si, Korea
Henry Oh is an artist and educator from Los Angeles, CA. Working primarily with ceramics and other mediums, he creates sculptures and installations that encourage physical movement and engagement. 

He transferred from Los Angeles City College to Otis College of Art and Design, where he earned a BFA in Fine Arts and currently teaches in their Adult Extension and ‘Summer of Arts’ Youth programs. He is a current MFA candidate at UC Berkeley.

Statement:
My work directs viewers to take an extra step — crouching, sitting, bending down, leaning in, looking up, and looking down. This embodied interaction, I like to think of as the way children move through a playground. I create spaces that invite lighthearted connections while also leaving room for deeper reflection. The objects individually become vessels, literally and more so conceptually, for personal narratives and memories that I unpack as a way to reflect and search for my sense of purpose and belonging. Collectively, they evoke an impulse to explore and also to gather. My recent projects take familiar objects and place them where they may feel slightly out of place, shifting how they’re perceived – whether nestled within wooden structures or resting openly on their surfaces. These subtle shifts invite viewers to question how we arrive at ideas of use and display, intimacy and distance, making and meaning. My innate pull toward Korean forms and culture — despite being so foreign to them — I imagine feels similar to the urge many people have to seek out birth parents or family members they have never met. The work allows me to explore the in-betweenness I’ve lived with, never fully here or there, continuously negotiating and blurring the edges.