This is a history buried under dirt, kiln bricks, and kiln slag, and it is also the scene of "events".
The kiln slags of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties that have been buried deep in the cultural layer of Jingdezhen for thousands of years, and the layers of historical scenes are awakened by the artist Xiangyang in the form of contemporary art.
"When I take the slag of the kiln a thousand years ago, the air in the sealed and sealed utensils may be from the Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty..." The artist Xiangyang, who was on the scene of the exhibition, was still excited about the encounter at that moment.
The accidental failure of a kiln caused the whole kiln porcelain to be mixed with kiln bricks and all the ash soil to be buried and isolated from the world due to the "event" of the disaster, and the artist Xiangyang accidentally let these broken, distorted, and burned artifacts regain their lives and be activated in the way of contemporary art.
Curators Zhou Ying (left) and Xiangyang (right) pose in front of the exhibition hall
From December 16, 2021 to February 22, 2022, the exhibition of artist Xiangyang's solo works "The Past is the Future" was exhibited at No. 19 Wangfu Central. In 2018, the pavilion plan of the Serpentine Gallery also landed in the 690-square-meter Caotang Greenland Square in Wangfu Zhonghuan and exhibited for half a year. In 2021, Xiang Yang's installation of another art project, Ocean Walk, featured a huge wooden boat 27 meters long on display in a green space in Central, Wangfu. The exhibition space of the artist Xiangyang in the No. 19 Mansion in the Central Ring of the Royal Palace is a royal three-entry courtyard with green tiles and red walls, and the Beizi mansion building of Aixin Jueluo Pulun in the Qing Dynasty was reconstructed. Artist Xiangyang met the famous potters of a thousand years ago because of chance and the cultural history of ceramics.
Blue and white jar with small pot
Scholar's Rock
Tricolor winter melon jar
Lang Hong three-legged wash
Kiln bricks with blue and white bowls
"It's the artist's reinvention of life. I don't see it as a thing, nor is it the end result. I love this kind of unpromising, hopeless, fruitless, change that occurs in extreme, non-negotiable circumstances. People's thinking about it as a culture is no longer a thing for me, and I must see it as a rethinking of life, a rethinking of culture. In the exhibition hall reconstructed from the ancient buildings of the Qing Dynasty, Xiangyang exhibited the artistic creations of old ancient ceramics and kiln slag in Jingdezhen for two years since 2020, covering silk thread works, documents and videos and other forms of presentation. It is also his reflection on history, culture and art in a contemporary way.
Matsuri Blue Sticker #3C Combo
Blue and white goblet set
"I don't want to be a solidified ceramic or this rigid process system." For discovery and creation, the artist always maintains the spirit of exploration that expands the original boundaries. If Xiangyang does not re-offer a new path in its own contemporary way, activating the carriers of these cultures, they will be built walls or paved, just like the fate of all construction waste...
Exhibition site
When these kiln slags are presented in a new way as a series of ceramic works by Xiangyang, the world is amazed.
The thousand-year-old porcelain capital of Jingdezhen was made from the "kiln waste" excavated from the porcelain kiln site in the Tang to the Republic of China period. They are ceramics in the firing process, due to the occurrence of temperature, humidity, man-made or natural disasters and other firing accidents, so that porcelain becomes a defective product and abandoned, commonly known as "kiln garbage". These products that have failed in the past are all reborn under the experience of being irreproducible again and again - being fired in large quantities, deforming in accidents, collapsing, and being buried. The appearance characteristics generated in the natural environment make the original practical stereotypes have a kaleidoscopic uniqueness in physics. Each becomes a unique abstract form.
Artist Sunny work photo
"Every porcelain it has a personality. Every time you start polishing a different piece, a small piece will hit a day. I've been thinking a lot about what it should look like, and I've been figuring out how to best fit it. Keep trying, keep talking to it, and make it appear in the most comfortable state. Just as you and it are fused together, there is not a relationship between you and it to do and to be done. Each of its lines has become a musical note, rhythmic, no longer a combination of lines and lines. It's a bit like a cell, and when you hit the first thread, you can't see what it is, but when many, many threads are put together, it forms a network, it's a network of life, it can create a new state on its own, it can speak on its own. Everyone reads it because it goes beyond the boundaries. The boundary here refers to the boundary of a piece of ceramic, a bowl, a work of art, an ancient thing. Every link of it is true, I see the importance of each of its links, show the best way, it is true, otherwise it will be ignored, it will be ignored and abandoned in the same way as it was before as a fragment of porcelain. Xiang Yang immersed himself in the time of excavating and polishing these "kiln slags" that were glued together with "15 hours of work a day". When the kiln bricks, porcelain pieces, and utensils that are adhered to each other have undergone the complicated process of cleaning, stripping, and carving, the "porcelain sculptures" that are still warm and jade after a thousand years and have strange shapes appear in front of the eyes.
The mushrooms filled with white porcelain on the repurchased ancient porcelain jars, the burned kiln slag was transformed and given new life by contemporary art at this time, and the porcelain that was glued together formed these delicate porcelain threads after separation.
These porcelains, which differ from everyday shapes, convey the story behind civilization with another, more "real" event. They are not only descriptive, but also have a certain direction and witness, which is the missing, folded and hidden part of cultural exchange and inheritance, and also provides different ways to understand the same thing. When the artist deeply sorts out and examines these disorderly porcelain pieces that have been stored for thousands of years, they strongly lead to another context -- about the time and space, the dimension, and zhuangzi's "useless use". Through selection, cleaning, separation, polishing and carving, the artist separates the burned ceramic artifacts from the memories of events and failures, giving the original existence, the essence of the "real" and the interpretation of the present.
"Fundamentally I cannot be sure of the nature of these things, all judgments are only one expression, and truth is only in expression... When I first opened them, the last millennium was only in the moment. Because of the judgment of the kiln workers for thousands of years (burned out), time is sealed in events. It is as if I have customized these 'works' in various eras and only now 'delivered'. But their social background and cultural symbol information is so vast. "—— Sunny
Artist Xiang Yang introduces the works of "This Side and That Side - Birds" created from 2006 to 2021
Combined with the previously exhibited public installation "Ocean Walk", which is constructed from old wooden furniture in ancient China, the exhibition as a whole presents the artist's reconstruction and re-creation of civilization hidden by history. The work integrates the spatial environment of the antique buildings of No. 19 House, and the curator Ms. Zhou Ying named the exhibition "Past is the Present Future", hoping that the historicity carried by the two will bring special effects to each other.
Ocean Walk is in the green space of Central of the Royal Palace
Following the exhibition of his 27-meter-long dragon boat installation "Ocean Walk" at the Caotang, a lawn space in the West Block of Wangfu Central in September 2021, Xiangyang brought the debut of the ceramic series to No. 19 House. The artist projects his exquisite humanistic preferences into the study of historical time and space and architectural structures, and carries this "refinement" in his contemporary art time to examine the relationship between relative thought and the state of existence.
"Past is The Present Future" Xiangyang Art Exhibition
Curator: Zhou Ying
Pavilion: No. 19, West Block, Central, Wangfu
Duration: 2021.12.16 - 2022.02.20