David Zink Yi

TENTACLE

Hauser & Wirth

Tentacle is a striking sculptural work by David Zink Yi, part of his acclaimed series of ceramic cephalopod forms. The life-size cast of an octopus tentacle lies draped on the gallery floor, offering a visceral encounter with a creature both familiar and alien.

Rendered in glazed stoneware and enriched with iridescent copper-lead surface, the piece conjures the uncanny through its anatomical realism and organic scale. At over 4.8 metres long in some iterations, Tentacle blurs the boundaries between sculpture and the living, probing ideas of identity, myth, and the unpredictable behaviour of natural materials.

Zink Yi’s practice explores formative memories, mythic symbolism, and the alchemical transformation of raw clay into organic, uncanny forms. This work continues his exploration of how bodily presence, postcolonial identity, and the grotesque intertwine in contemporary ceramics.