EXHIBITION OPENING: March 20, 2026. See link in bio to learn more and RSVP.
The Long Beach Museum of Art is pleased to present Holding Time, an exhibition bringing together the work of Southern California artists Elyse Pignolet and MyungJin Kim, whose ceramic vessels function as platforms for storytelling, cultural heritage, and activism. While their visual languages and narratives differ, both artists move beyond the conceptual ceramic traditions established by Southern California. Instead, they return to historically rooted forms of vases, pots, tiles, and mirrors, using them as vessels to communicate personal and culturally resonant narratives.
Across their practices and mediums, botanicals and decorative motifs form a shared visual language. Floral ornamentation and natural imagery appear throughout their surfaces, creating layers of symbolism that explore themes of femininity, mythology, spirituality, cultural identity, and social history. These ornamental elements are not merely aesthetic; they act as visual frameworks through which the artists examine inherited traditions and contemporary experience.
Material also plays a central role in their practices. Pignolet works with a white clay body that references porcelain and its global history, drawing upon the familiar language of blue-and-white floral decoration to consider cultural exchange, colonial histories, and visual stereotypes embedded in decorative traditions. Kim, by contrast, works in terracotta, one of humanity’s oldest fired materials, embracing its deep historical associations with ritual, domestic life, and early forms of communication.
Together, their works reveal how traditional ceramic forms can hold contemporary narratives, bridging past and present through clay while reflecting the enduring human impulse to record stories through objects.
Exhibition support provided by
@pasadenaartalliance
Artwork
•Elyse Pignolet, Gold Digger, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Track 16 Gallery.
•MyungJin Kim, Hortus Talisman 1, 2022. Courtesy of MyungJin Kim for The Future Perfect.
