Korean ceramicist Jongjin Park has established himself as one of the most singular figures in contemporary craftsmanship. His work, which transforms paper into porcelain, has just been awarded the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2026, the leading international prize for excellence in fine craftsmanship.
A mass of paper enters the kiln, and what emerges resembles nothing known, which is precisely the point. Jongjin Park, a 43-year-old Korean ceramicist based in Guri, near Seoul, constructs his works from a seemingly elementary gesture: soaking sheets of tissue paper in pigment-tinted porcelain slip, stacking them into dense blocks of up to a thousand sheets, and then firing them. In the heat of the kiln, the paper disappears, and the porcelain retains the memory of each fold, each layer, each decision of the hand.
What emerges sometimes resembles a stratigraphic cross-section of the earth, sometimes a marquetry of petrified fibers. The palette, so Korean in its style, plays on nuanced pastel tones: pale blue, coral red, chalky yellow, moss green, which accumulate in ridges and furrows. Park explores this theme in several distinct families of works. The Artistic Stratum Patch These are volumetric sculptures of varying sizes, compact blocks with sharp edges where layers of color are stacked like geological strata. Wall Artistic Stratum They are designed for the wall: flat and dense pieces, they hang like abstract paintings and play on the surprise of the material, between visible textile and mineral solidity. The series Collapsed FormShe, however, goes even further in relinquishing control: the forms give way, sag, open up, as if matter continued to hesitate between solidity and collapse. Strata of Illusion ('strata of illusion'), 2025, is the most accomplished synthesis, a partially collapsed seat-like form whose surface seems supple and almost textile, while it is fixed forever in the hardness of ceramic.
This trompe-l'œil effect runs throughout his entire practice. Park draws on the Korean tradition of MoonjarThe large white vase from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897) is a prime example, its essence more than its form: the beauty born from patient gestures and the acceptance of the unknown. Warmth and gravity shape the final form, and the resulting honest imperfection is embraced as a signature. His work also evokes glassblowing in its use of air to establish form, and bookbinding in the layering of pages. He himself puts it this way: "My work asks us to consider what is real." manipulating matter and surface to elicit an experience of active doubt in the observer.
For the past five years, the Galerie Daguet-Bresson in Paris has supported him on this international journey, from Design Miami to PAD London and EMERGE Singapore. His works are featured in institutional collections, including the Gyeonggi Ceramics Museum and the Icheon World Ceramic Expo Center, and his collaborations with luxury brands extend his interest in the links between traditional manufacturing and contemporary design culture.
It is this integrity of manufacture that the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2026 has come to consecrate, distinguishing Park among 5,100 applications from 133 countries, before a jury composed notably of Patricia Urquiola, Frida Escobedo, Olivier Gabet, director of the decorative arts department at the Louvre, and Wang Shu, winner of the Pritzker Prize.
For Jongjin Park, nothing resembles what one thinks one recognizes at first glance. Paper becomes mineral, fragility petrifies, collapse becomes form. His striated vases, his wall blocks, his sagging sculptures all pose the same question without ever answering it: what is real in what we see? It is this ability to maintain doubt, to make two states of matter coexist in the same object, that gives his work a presence as unsettling as it is immediate.
Eve Kaplan
Loewe Foundation Craft Prize 2026
Until June 14, 2026
National Gallery Singapore
1 St Andrew's Road, Singapore
