An aura of eerie calmness hangs around a large basin with dozens of porcelain bowls floating on it. The white porcelain contrasts with the brilliantly intense azure water of the basin, infusing a soothing peace, but the installation also provides an intriguing auditory experience as the bowls float and move on the water clinking and producing different sounds. This is just one of the installations that will be welcoming visitors at the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, from Saturday until May next year.
The work, by artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot (art fans may remember his "rêvolutions" installations with "migrating trees" in and outside the French Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale), is part of "In Motion: Ceramic Reflections in Contemporary Art", the largest contemporary art exhibition ever organised at the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics.
The event will celebrate the museum's centenary in a unique style as it will include very original installations by internationally established artists and emerging talents.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's piece may be the best one, but there are many other to discover. Geng Xue combines for example film with fine bone China.
The result is mesmerising with beautiful porcelain figurines and props turning into the protagonists of a haunting supernatural horror entitled "Mr Sea".
The plot is inspired by Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, a collection of classical Chinese tales by Pu Songling, a writer from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
David Zink Yi plays instead with colours, techniques and proportions: his giant squid lying deflated on the floor of the museum looks fantastic but also incredibly real, like a creature out of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea that had been washed ashore during a storm.
Yet when you look close up you realise that the soft skin of the squid was rendered via the glazing technique, using a copper and lead coating to create an iridescent surface.
In a way South-Korean artist Meekyoung Shin plays with the same real/fake dichotomy: her replicas of 16th-20th century ornate and antique Chinese vases displayed on travelling crates that embody the power of ceramics in a world in constant development, look extremely similar to the real ones.
The pieces hide a secret, though, as the hand-painted vases are actually made from soap. The vases are part of her ongoing "Translation" project, that explores literal and figurative mutations.
In this case the porcelain has been transformed into soap, but the meaning of the cultural objects has also been lost in this fascinating facsimiles of Chinese originals.
Fans of technology will instead enjoy Claire Verkoyen and Roger Hiorns' pieces: the former combines wafer-thin translucent eggshell porcelain vessels manufactured in isolated workshops in the city of Jingdezhen in China with hand-painted or printed decorative elements of a futuristic world. The pieces are combined in an installation that includes 3D animations on monitors.
Hiorns applied the principle of "programmed randomness" to his objects and installations. The earthenware pieces included in the exhibition emanate a foam cloud formed by a basic solution that grows and develops thanks to a compressor.
Though the vases forming the installation do have a specific shape, the foam comes out in different silhouettes, generating continously new yet fleeting forms. This piece seems to summarise the final aim and objective of the exhibition.
"The title of the event - In Motion - indicates that ceramics in contemporary visual art is in development," states indeed curator Tanya Rumpff. "The exhibition shows that contemporary artists embrace ceramics and that it is no longer exclusively an applied art form but a full artistic medium."
The 100th anniversary of the Princessehof National Museum is also celebrated through a completely new layout of the permanent collection and a large renovation of the entrance area and the garden (the museum was closed in the last stages of renovations and will reopen this week), and with a number of additional exhibitions. Apart from "In Motion", art and designs fans will be able to enjoy two further ceramic displays with Flemish artist Johan Tahon's contemplative figures and albarelli (pharmacy pots) and designer Floris Wubben's textured pieces.
The events at the Princessehof prove that ceramic is very much alive and in a dynamic transformation in the creative world – more fashion designers should pay attention as this material may lend them some great inspirations (just think about the avant-garde accessories that could be created in collaboration with some of these artists rethinking ceramics...).
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