Ceramics

Xie Dong only sought to work in porcelain after noticing the beauty in the wrinkles and folds of a tinfoil chocolate bar wrapper, translating those ephemeral qualities to ceramic — a more permanent but naturally fragile and delicate looking cross-medium. The use of Bone China, made locally, means the china retains a translucent, ivory-coloured quality once fired, and these ‘Zhezhou’ or ‘Wrinkle’ cups intentionally impress the texture, creases and elusive dynamics inherent in tinfoil.

Teapot with Tires (Yixing Series) 1985 Stoneware; ht. 2.75, wd. 8, dp. 3.75 in. Artist signature Notkin 1985 incised on base Notkin is an American artist born in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1970 studying under Ken Ferguson. In 1973 he received his MFA from the University of California, Davis where he studied under one of America's greatest ceramic sculptors, Robert Arneson. The shear detail of his "lonely" sidewalk teapots based on the Chinese Yixing Tradition are highly prized by collectors and have never lost their political power over the decades. The shear detail of these works is amazing right down to the treads of the tires which show their worn quality. The "tire" on the lid is loose and the element you pick up when handling the lid, another Yixing tradition used in an American concept.

Johnson Tsang’s “Tearpot” reimagines the domestic teapot as a quasi-functional work of sculpture. The bust of a man with a furrowed brow forms the body of the teapot. Slits in his nearly-shut eyes secrete liquid when the vessel is put to use, creating the impression of tears and suggesting pain, sadness, or discomfort, perhaps inflicted by the dragon, a common motif in Tsang’s work, that hovers at the back of the figure’s bald head. With its serpentine body, the dragon forms the handle of the vessel. Tsang’s naturalistic rendering of the man, with his white, skin-like bisque finish, is contrasted against the surreal presence of the glossy, blue-glazed dragon.

Teasel: These pieces use a regular pattern based on the teasel flower. The form is a result of allowing the irregularities in the handmade work to influence the direction that the pattern and shape followed.

Toland’s sculpture finds a remarkable intimacy in her studies, the increase in scale and framing of expres

As playful with the plasticity of language as with clay, Nagle’s love of simple, sometimes crude, humour is solidified in ‘Thataway’ — a harmony of confusion and misdirection as two fingers point to two opposite directions. The unnatural effect of the blushing, tinted colours further accentuates a creeping sense of ambiguity. The primal, earthly state of clay is further devolved by the sculpture’s true model; dog droppings — and the piece subtly consecrates the waste, the ability for art to veil and make sacred any object of any origin through formalism, and becomes a joke token of the relationship between animal and doting owner happy to pick up after it.

In Ron Nagle’s “The Mingler,” simple, geometric forms combine with vibrant colors and contrasting textures to create an object of great complexity. “The Mingler” is part of a series of just ten works created in 2003 that reference snuff bottles—diminutive, intricately decorated, lidded vessels innovated in China during the Qing dynasty. Snuff bottles were used for the storage and dispensation of powdered tobacco, which was believed to have medicinal properties. Like a traditional snuff bottle, “The Mingler” is small in scale and features a glossy, button-like top. While Nagle’s treatment of the glaze hints at an oozing, molten elixir, the work eludes function. The smooth green glaze collects in a viscous ribbon as it approaches the base of the object, abruptly transitioning in color from white to a candy apple red. The piece is composed of two geometric volumes that hover delicately over a thin base, a common device in Nagle’s work.

The fluidity and figurative resonance of Bhat’s ceramic sculpture might result from the artist’s original background in Indian classical dance — the negotiation of space as ancillary to an overall positive form, and performative act of creation appealing to Bhat. “The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts” suggests an elemental fusion of subject and object, landscape and figure sliding together to become single, more definitively abstract entities — the geological curvatures embedded in the vessels feeling clearly resolved from the material nature of the clay, but conscious tooof a human presence upon its overall resolution.