I took advantage of our first truly hot day of the year to venture over to the Hood Museum of Art to see an exhibition of contemporary ceramic work, Sin-ying Ho: Past Forward.
Having spent much of the winter working on sculptural forms, I took particular inspiration from Sin-ying Ho’s smaller pieces assembled from multiple parts – but with monumental pieces also on display and her variety of painting and image transfer techniques combining traditional and modern themes and processes, there was far more to try to absorb…
As described by the Hood Museum:
If Chinese ceramic art has a heart, it beats in Jingdezhen. For centuries, artisans there have made vessels that traveled far and wide. Their fluid forms and recognizable decorations have inspired celebratory prose and devoted followers around the world. Today, Sin-ying Ho works in these same ceramics factories. Though Jingdezhen potters have long defined tradition, Sin-ying has expanded both their forms and their imagery in contemporary ceramics that are thoroughly of the twenty-first century. She makes her works—whether they are monumental vases or smaller, more clearly assembled sculptures—from multiple parts. She emphasizes the many parts by glazing each of the pieces differently. Together they form a whole that maintains the legacy of being created from myriad fragments.
Sin-ying’s process of building is an essential metaphor for her artistic practice. With it, she implies an optimism for our society’s continued ability to construct a unified world. As reflected in her technique, and in the themes addressed by her surface imagery, this world will necessarily be an amalgam of new and old, here and there, greed and generosity, men and women, faith and despair. Through these combinations, Sin-ying shares a worldview that acknowledges the inherent contradictions and challenges of global culture while also anticipating the uncanny beauty emerging all around us.
The exhibition is open through May 27, and a .pdf version of the exhibition catalog is available on-line.
