New “China”: Porcelain Art from Jingdezhen, 1910-2012

China Institute Gallery will host an exhibition of modern and contemporary porcelain art from Jingdezhen.

A new exhibition of modern and contemporary porcelain art from Jingdezhen, the renowned porcelain capital of China, will be on view at China Institute Gallery from September 21 to December 9, 2012. New “China”: Porcelain Art from Jingdezhen, 1910-2012 will offer more than 45 works spanning over a century – including sculpture, paintings on porcelain, as well as vases and other objects. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

New “China”: Porcelain Art from Jingdezhen, 1910-2012 includes work by such noted contemporary artists as Zhu Legeng, Ah Xian, Zhu Dequn, and Wayne Higby, all of whom have studied in or traveled to Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province. Bridging traditional and utilitarian practices with pioneering techniques, the exhibition opens with a selection of modern work by artists who worked in the first decades of the 20th century. Most of the work in the exhibition is on exhibit for the first time in the United States.

For more than 1,000 years, Jingdezhen provided a major source of porcelain for the imperial court as well as for the entire world. The region’s unique geology offered an extraordinary white clay known as kaolin. During the Tang dynasty in the 700s CE in the north of China, kaolin was combined with other materials by skilled artisans to create the world’s first porcelain. 

The Italian explorer Marco Polo traveled through China in 1271 and 1295 and refers to Jingdezhen as “where they make the most beautiful cups in the world; they are of porcelain and are manufactured in no other part of the earth besides that city.”

The ceramic trade from Jingdezhen was so influential that it may have led to the naming of the country. The ancient name of Jingdezhen, Changnan, became synonymous with ceramics, and it is said that over time, foreign ceramics traders pronounced the name to sound like “China.” 

Exhibition Highlights
Among the highlights in New “China”: Porcelain Art from Jingdezhen, 1910-2012 will be work by Ah Xian, who emigrated from his native China to Australia soon after the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989.  Four sculptures from his China, China series, 1999–2004, are in the exhibition. Covered with traditional Chinese imagery, his porcelain busts of himself and others represent a complex relationship with his homeland. As Nancy Selvage, former Director of the Ceramics Program at Harvard University, and Lili Fang, Director of the Artistic Anthropology Research Institute, Beijing, write in the catalogue essay, “Despite the traditional rendition of familiar designs and benevolent symbols, the bold interaction of this glazed imagery with the passive white body often evokes disturbing emotional overtones.” His work was seen in a 2002 exhibition at Asia Society in New York City.

The renowned ceramic artist Zhu Legeng was one of the first artists to set up his workshop and studio in Jingdezhen in the post-Mao era. Chan (Zen), 2011, depicts a peaceful group of modern humanesque creatures with elongated heads meditating to achieve a Zen state, each holding a branch of lotus, the symbol of purity.   

One of the best-known Chinese artists working in Paris, Zhu Dequn painted abstract canvases for many years. Towards the end his career, he switched to painting on traditional blue and white Chinese porcelain vases in a style that merges abstract imagery with traditional Eastern painting styles. In Let life arise and persist from the tip of a brush, 2007, he creates an Impressionist field of flowers on a round blue and white vase with strokes in painted gold. Now in his nineties and no longer able to paint due to a stroke, the work in the exhibition represents the last of his career.

Wayne Higby, the only artist of non-Chinese heritage, creates work that draws from his experiences in Jingdezhen after visiting ancient Kiln sites. His EarthCloud Sketch/Gold #3, 2006, and EarthCloud Sketch/Gold #4, 2006, are reliefs of glazed and fired porcelain arranged in a grid. His work is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In 2004, he became the first foreign national to be acclaimed an honorary citizen of the city of Jingdezhen.

A towering porcelain vase by Sin-ying Ho, In the Dream of Hope No. 2, 2010, combines Eastern and Western motifs. Her work has been on view most recently in numerous exhibitions in Canada and the U.S. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she emigrated to Canada and now lives and works in New York City.

The work in New “China”: Porcelain Art from Jingdezhen, 1910-2012 is on loan from private  collections in China, Hong Kong, France, Australia, and the U.S. and from the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse.

Under the direction of Willow Weilan Hai Chang, Director, China Institute Gallery, the exhibition is co-curated by Lili Fang, Director of the Artistic Anthropology Research Institute, Beijing, and Nancy Selvage, former Director of the Ceramics Program at Harvard University.