David Zink Yi (*1973, Peru) is a Berlin-based artist who works primarily in video, photography, and sculpture. His work often deals with the idea of the body and shows Peruvian, Chinese as well as German cultural influences. We were intrigued ever since we saw his amazing steel palm tree sculptures two years ago @ MUDAM (more info about this work available through This Is Tomorrow). At Art Basel Unlimited, David Zink Yi exhibited a recent sculpture of a mythical giant octopus specie Architeuthis. Enormous by scale, realistic in its details and lying in a shiny dark liquid, as if just washed ashore, it drew all the crowd attention.
Artwork Description by John Rasmussen:
‘Over the past few years, David Zink Yi has worked within the ceramic tradition to create a series of sculptures modeled on Architeuthis, the deep-sea-dwelling giant squid, an elusive creature prominent in myth and legend. Until only a few years ago, the giant squid had never been encountered alive; human experience of this life form was limited to corpses we discovered washed up on beaches. In his largest ceramic sculpture to date, Zink Yi uses the transformative power of heat and pressure to create a handcrafted creature that we understand only through the knowledge of its surface – a body without depth or animus. Lead and copper glazes play off each other to create variation within its metallic surface. The 16-foot deflated form rests in a blackened pool of liquid, provoking the viewer into a power full encounter with the grotesque.’
David Zink Yi is represented by Hauser & Wirth Gallery, New York and Johann König Gallery, Berlin.