Sculptor Jae Ko at Marsha Mateyka Gallery: Art in focus Washington sculptor Jae Ko is known for works made from coiled adding machine tape. (Marsha Mateyka Gallery) Jae Ko has made a name for herself with elegantly simple wall sculptures made from her signature material: coils of adding machine tape. Recently, the Washington artist has begun to branch out, with looser installations like her recent, site-specific "Force of Nature"at the Phillips Collection, made from unstructured rolls of brown kraft paper. The nine pieces on view in "Jae Ko: Recent Sculpture" at the Marsha Mateyka Gallery - all made from coils of adding machine tape brushed with glue and red or black ink - were inspired by the gnarled texture of bristlecone pines that Ko saw during a trip to California. Like those ancient trees, which can look dead, though they are still living, Ko's recent sculptures have an energy that animates and enlivens. Read my review and check out a selection of images after the jump. Ko's largest piece at the gallery is a serpentine, 13-foot-long floor sculpture, colored with black sumi ink. Marsha Mateyka Gallery The play of light and shadow is an integral park of Ko's work, as in these two untitled pieces. Ko's coiled paper sculptures sometimes resemble giant, deformed augers. There is a tension between the organic and the machine-made. The calligraphic elegance and minimalist contemporary flair of the work contrasts nicely with the gallery's hundred-year-old architecture.