Kyong Boon Oh approaches her sculptural work with a deeply intimate and meditative process. Oh pairs together figurative and abstract forms that she constructs from intertwined metal wire. Oh views a single wire as a representation of her life path. She explores the tension between her physical and emotional self, while engaging in the labor-intensive process of weaving together threads of wire.

Oh’s father was a metalsmith, so spools of wire were always readily available to play with. Wire started out as a toy for Oh, before she turned it into art. Prior to her wire sculptures, painting was the artist’s medium of choice. She would create 7 and 8-foot tall figurative paintings, which she describes as being gestural and disturbingly beautiful.

After a period of health problems, Oh was frequently unable to walk and was forced to stop painting. While confined to a chair, she began twisting bendable threads of copper and aluminum wire together, soon discovering that this would become the new medium for her artwork. The slow, meditative weaving helped her as she worked through her thoughts, a single thread of wire representing Oh’s stream of consciousness and a physical pathway for her mind.

*Cradle*, 2003-2021, copper, aluminum, steel wire, 30” x 24” x 15”

In the ‘ID ME’ series, Oh focuses on figurative wire sculptures, investigating each figure as aspects of her identity. Oh thinks of this particular series as representing the path of conflict. For Oh, the primary conflict is: who am I? The relationship between mother and child is reflected in many of the ‘ID ME’ pieces.

*Self Portrait* and *6 Year Old*, brass wire, chicken wire, galvanized steel wire, 40” x 68” x 38” and 27” x 45” x 25”

The ‘WALK SLOWLY’ series, which is Oh’s largest body of work, consists of various abstract wire sculptures that have been meticulously wrapped and coiled over and over again. Some of these works are free-standing while others are wall-hung or even suspended from the ceiling. Oh sees this collection of work as a representation of her ‘path of solitude.’ She creates each artwork with a single thread of wire, saying that the length of the wire equals the limit of her patience. Oh created many of these sculptures with inspirations from organic structures, such as bird nests, as well as the mathematical structure: the infinite möbius strip.

Oh’s ‘CORE’ series consists of carved limestone columns, which represent the passage of time for the artist. To hollow out and shape each column, Oh must carefully chip away at the limestone surface and then sand down each imperfection. As she works, Oh carves a literal path through the stone, in order to reveal what she refers to as a “secret space.” Oh shapes her stones into cylindrical forms with organic twists and curves, nodding to the geological definition of “core” as a cylindrical sample of earth that leaves the natural layers of sediment undisturbed. As Oh carves inside each column, she feels that she is getting to the root of things unseen, viewing the empty spaces and small gaps that are left over as a place of reconciliation.

*Core Series*, limestone, 28” x 5.5” x 5.5” each

Ceramic and marble sculptures are featured in Oh’s ‘GIL’ series, which represents ‘the path of suffering’ for the artist. Chaos and order exist simultaneously within these tangled, infinite forms. Oh named this body of work ‘GIL,’ a computer-language term, that refers to a mechanism that allows exactly one coding thread to execute at a time. In addition, ‘GIL’ translates to ‘path’ in Oh’s native Korean. This is descriptive of Oh’s sculpting process, in which she uses single linear forms to construct each artwork.

*Gil (Path) I* fired clay, acrylic, 15x6x10”

When asked to explain the meaning behind her art, Oh says that her work is all about “waiting for the chance to occupy a conscious moment.”

Korean-born Kyong Boon Oh received her B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 and her B.S. in Mathematics from Korea University in Seoul in 1996. She is a founding member of the Stone Sculptors Guild of Orange County (SSGOC).