[untitled]

UNTITLED

2020

Ceramic

Antwerp, Belgium

Every Buddha is already a replica.

Long before the hand approaches the clay, the form has travelled through centuries of repetition. One sculptor inherits another. One image inherits another. One generation reproduces what a previous generation has already reproduced.

The original retreats further into history with every act of replication.

This work marks the beginning of Tae's Simulacra and Simulation series.

If the preceding body of work questioned the relationship between object and meaning, this new enquiry turned towards a different uncertainty: the disappearance of origins.

The Buddha became a natural point of departure.

Few forms have undergone such sustained repetition throughout human history. Across kingdoms, dynasties, religions, and continents, the image has been endlessly recreated through stone, wood, bronze, lacquer, gold, and paint.

Rather than searching for an original, Tae entered this lineage through replication itself.

Produced as his first ceramic sculpture, the work emerged through an intensive study of historical Korean Buddhist sculpture, classical form, and human anatomy. The process became one of prolonged observation and repetition.

Yet something unexpected occurred.

As the form emerged from the clay, traces of the artist's own likeness gradually appeared within the face.

The Buddha became neither self portrait nor icon.

Neither historical object nor contemporary sculpture.

Instead it occupied an ambiguous territory between inheritance and authorship.

The work therefore exists simultaneously as replica and original.

As self and other.

As historical continuation and personal reflection.

It stands at the precise moment where the distinction between origin and reproduction begins to dissolve.