Also this issue: Fit To Print The self-publishers converging on Zine Fest resist the rise of the machines. -Patrick Rapa Swoosh -Lori Hill E. Lynn Harris -A.D. Amorosi Nrityagram Dance Ensemble -Deni Kasrel Bridging the Gap -Dana Procaccino Puppetry of the Penis -Deni Kasrel 1776 -Steve Cohen Mao in the Boardroom: Marketing Genius From The Mind Of The Master Guerrilla -Andrew Parks

July 10-16, 2003

art

Chinese Ceramics Today Hide Sadohara: New Work

Wong Fiona, Vest (Gamma) (2002), approximately 12 by 18 by 2 inches, terra cotta.

Chinese ceramicists reflect the country’s changing cultural climate. A local artist complements their vision.

by Susan Hagen

It goes without saying that the massive social, economic and political changes that have taken place in China over the past 20 years have deeply affected the lives and the work of its creative artists. The state-sponsored art of the past half-century has given way to a new type of art based in individual personal expression and international artistic concerns, though in most cases it still refers to -- and is defined by -- the politics and traditions of China. Chinese painters, sculptors and conceptual artists have already drawn international attention to themselves, but contemporary ceramic artists in China have only recently begun to forge an identity and a sense of community.

Currently, an exhibition of recent work by 22 ceramic artists active in this movement is touring China, Europe and the United States. This large, impressive show now fills The Clay Studio's first-floor gallery and the adjacent Nexus galleries. All of the work contains substantial references to past traditions of Chinese ceramics, along with delightful sincerity, intelligence and wit. Fortunately, you don't have to be a historian of Chinese art to appreciate the depth and quality of the work in this show.

Chinese art and archaeology clearly inspires many artists with work in the show, including Wong Fiona, who made three vests from small terra cotta tiles, tiny clay buttons and other details -- suggesting the armor of the terra cotta army for the First August Emperor of Qin. Yang Guoxin's Situation 1-5 is a series of pieces that reflects on the tradition of Chinese scholars' rocks. The crusty, cracked glazes on the convoluted surfaces are each highlighted or shaded with a different pure, bright, unnatural color. They suggest a new way of looking at nature in today's world. Luo Xiaoping's Eighteen Gift Baskets is visually delightful and sophisticated. He has filled each of 18 bright red baskets with approximately 10 small, jewel-like teapots mass-produced in Yixing. Luo weaves together his concern for the traditions of artistic production, gift-giving and the current economy of the country.

Several of the artists find inspiration in Chinese blue-and-white export pottery, the most successful mass-produced ware in the history of ceramics. Wang Haichen collages blue decorations on distorted and fractured storage pots in Garden Blues. In Reality and Unreality, she layers fuzzy blue images of calligraphy, musical notation and traditional Chinese painting on bare white plinths. Drawing from the same tradition, Huang Huanyi's Clay Language I is a wonderfully expressive vessel made of twisted porcelain and covered with blue Chinese characters. Pei Xueli employs the most elemental relationship of blue to white, in his tall and smooth-walled white vessel with a dollop of saturated blue glaze at the top.

Many of the artists have a profound interest in the earthy physicality of clay. Jiang Yan has made a series of extruded strands of celadon porcelain that ripple on a horizontal surface. Fission -- 2 has several tiny rectangles thrust into it like splinters, drawing up the image of a few small buildings tucked into a vast landscape. Pot with Marks, by Bai Lei, is a square, solidly built open vessel made of wood-fired stoneware that's been marred by gashes, bumps and scars and covered with an irregular white slip. The artist seems to have infused the clay in this magnificent pot with a forbearance and a strength worthy of this great ceramic tradition.

While you're at The Clay Studio, don't miss the installation by local artist Hide Sadohara, a CS artist-in-residence, in the second-floor gallery. Sadohara has applied a remarkable facility for modeling clay -- along with a very active imagination -- to an elaborate installation of constructed ceramic elements and other materials. The result is interesting, albeit complicated and overwrought, and includes toy-like ceramic figures, AstroTurf, a picket fence and a three-part "altar" with two boyish male nudes accented by tiles, flourishes and painted silhouettes. Still, the uniqueness of Sadohara's artistic vision is unmistakable and it will be fascinating to follow his development in future years.

Chinese Ceramics Today

Hide Sadohara: New Work

Through July 26, The Clay Studio, 139 N. Second St., 215-925-3453.