Jane Yang D’Haene creates stoneware vessels drawing upon her Korean heritage. Though descended from traditional Korean ceramic forms, such as the dal hang-ari or moon jar, D’Haene’s vessels depart from this history as she experiments with surface, form, and technique. D’Haene seeks to transform the emotional experience of memory into the physical. Through abstraction and experimentation, D’Haene creates new visions of place and self, expanding on her earliest influences and extending across her lived experience, cultural identity, and creative practice.
Since D’Haene began her career as a ceramicist in 2016, the influence of moon jars has guided her practice. These vessels, embodying simplicity and elegance, are often associated with Korean identity and historically are made from two hemispherical halves of clay joined and fired to become a single smooth porcelain vessels. This process creates minimal, ghostlike, and often asymmetrical objects with a wide body and small base, giving an illusion of levitation. Although derived from these more stoic vessels, D’Haene’s moon jars are intricately textured, with active, undulating and unexpected surfaces. Rather than working within the confines of the artistic tradition, she is a vanguard actively toying with the conceptual and technical possibilities of it. D'Haene’s exploration of moon jars results in conceptually challenging objects that defy traditional relationships between form and function. The surfaces of her works bloom, crater, and percolate like planetary bodies, celebrating nature, the universe, the earth, and, therefore, of the artist’s beloved medium. Through the forming and cutting of clay and the often-experimental application of various glazes, the richly textured and expressively marked surfaces of D’Haene’s works also manifest as shifting perspectives and identities, as well as unearthed memories.
Flaws are the conceptual and formal core of D'Haene's practice; they imbue her work with an energy that complements the fluid tonal shifts she produces across their surfaces. She experiments with and expands upon the anomalies of form and color created during firing, a process that leaves much to chance. Embracing imperfection with intention, D’Haene captures its aesthetic value to create a balance between the various opposing forces in her work. The vessels are simultaneously terrestrial and other-worldly, abstracted and functional. Each piece is edgy, spirited, and authentic, reflecting her quest for perfection—not of symmetry and modulation but of feeling, expressiveness, and the way each work contributes to D’Haene’s ongoing fashioning of her own identity, experience and truth.
Born in South Korea, Jane Yang D’Haene moved to New York City in 1984. D’Haene then attended the Cooper Hewitt School of Architecture from 1988 to 1992. Both her education and later experience as an interior designer for a premier architecture firm helped shape her fascination with art and design. D’Haene began working with ceramics in 2016, drawing upon her cultural heritage and multifaceted design background to create a highly researched and fresh body of work. Her work has been widely exhibited and is part of several permanent collections. D'Haene's work has been highlighted in the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Domino, House Beautiful, Design Anthology, and Surface Mag, among others. In 2023, D'Haene's work was selected by Vice President Kamala Harris to be a part of the art collection of the Vice President's residence. Recent solo exhibitions include: Hauser & Wirth, Southampton, NY (2023 & 2024); Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA (2024); Maya Frodeman Gallery (formerly Tayloe Piggott Gallery), Jackson Hole, WY (2022 & 2024); Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL (2024); Galerie Italienne, Paris, France (2023); The Future Perfect, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Bienvenu Steinberg & J, New York, NY (2023); The Future Perfect, New York, NY (2023); Alison Bradley Projects, New York, NY (2022); Maud & Mabel, London, England (2022); and Stroll Garden, Los Angeles, CA (2022). D’Haene lives with her husband and three children in Brooklyn, NY.