Emily Yong Beck (B. 1999)
Kamen Rider in Action
signed by the artist
glazed ceramic
12 x 9 x 9 inches (30.48 x 22.86 x 22.86 cm)
Executed in 2025.

NOTES:

Beck’s ceramic practice examines how craft traditions and contemporary visual culture intersect, using familiar vessel forms as a stage for imagery pulled from cartoons and childhood iconography. What appears playful at first glance becomes more complex as her characters are reworked in clay and reveal the subtle influence of cultural messaging and forgotten histories. Here we see Kamen Rider, one of Japan's most famous tokusatsu franchises, rendered in hand-built ceramic balancing nostalgia and critique to prompt viewers to look again at an image they think they already know.

Emily Yong Beck (b. 1999, Daegu, South Korea) is an interdisciplinary ceramic artist currently based in Chicago. She earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021. Beck has held solo exhibitions at galleries including Gaa Gallery in Provincetown, MA; New Image Art in Los Angeles, CA; and Lefebvre et Fils in Paris, FR. She has also participated in artist residencies at institutions such as Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (Newcastle, ME) and Township10 (Marshall, NC).

Photography by Chris Hanke. Courtesy of the Artist and The Pit.