Glazing in wonderment

• Source: Global Times
• [09:27 September 03 2010]
• Comments

Floating Landscape by Liu Jianhua. Photo: Courtesy of Xu Lingling

By Huang Xi

The ancient meets the modern and both have lessons to learn in ceramics, a traditional Chinese art form that has been showing two sides of its nature in Shanghai at present.

The acclaimed Shanghai artist Liu Jianhua is exhibiting his latest ceramic work Floating Landscape at Z-Art Center in Pudong New Area, while downtown, Taiwanese artist Liu Mingwu has just finished an exhibition showcasing an ancient form of ceramics - jiaozhitao.

Liu Jianhua's exhibition features an installation consisting of hundreds of porcelain creations in different sizes. Visitors can see skyscrapers, shikumen buildings, bridges, automobiles, electrical appliances, boots, purses, oilcans, baskets, thermos flasks, books, toys, hats and more, arranged around a Huangpu River shape. Hanging above these daily objects, the sort of things one sees along the Bund, are aircraft and tanks suspended in mid-air.

Adding to the visual treat is the sweet and soft voice of Zhou Xuan, a popular Shanghai singer and film actress of the 1930s, helping old and new Shanghai converge in a pure white porcelain world.

This is not the first time Liu Jianhua has made a complex mapped work - this one belongs to his Daily/Fragile series. He has made porcelain "maps" for cities and regions including Venice in 2003, Dublin in 2004, and Manhattan in 2007.

This work could remind some visitors of Zhan Wang, a Beijing-based artist, who used stainless steel pots and pans to create a massive Beijing in his 2002 work Urban Landscape. Unlike Zhan's inference of the power and centrality of Beijing, Liu's work suggests a fragile and visually charming Shanghai.

Liu Jianhua has been studying ceramics since he was 14 years old in the "Ceramic Capital" Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province.

He continues to make porcelain using traditional techniques. Although this work was designed in his Shanghai workshop, it was then delivered to Jingdezhen for molding, casting and firing.

Liu Jianhua has been trying to make new "contemporary" works using the traditional Chinese form. "Porcelain can best express my thinking, and that's why, since 1998, I have concentrated on using it as the major material in my creations," he said.

Unlike Liu Jianhua's "modern" porcelains, Liu Mingwu's jiaozhitao works look like traditional pottery.

Sharing similar experiences as Liu Jianhua, the Taiwanese artist studied under the famous temple architect Lin Wenxian from when he was 15 years old and acquired five of the six basic skills for building a temple.

He could not study jiaozhitao, the art of colored temple pottery because it had fallen into disuses for more than half a century.

Years later, using a manual that had been preserved for 19 generations, he experimented and finally succeeded in bringing this form of temple art back to life.

But he was not satisfied until he integrated the skills of Western oil painting into the traditional jiaozhitao techniques and could produce colored glazed pottery enriched with a "contemporary" flavor.

Date: Until September 27, 10:30 am to 6:30 pm, (closed on Monday)

Venue: Z-Art Center 张江当代艺术馆

Address: 419 Zuchongzhi Road

祖冲之路419号

Call 5134-5059 for details