Contemporary ceramic artists biography page

From the ancient period till today, ceramics has arguably been amongst the few mediums to have persevered through zillions of years - the chief known ceramic artifact is old as early as 28,000 BCE during the late Palaeolithic copy out. This perseverance has, of run, met with iterations and evolutions that have allowed it amount stay relevant in our coeval world.

However, many traditional techniques have remained as the main support of this craft. Subtle adaptations in techniques have allowed pursue large possibilities, while experimental approaches have allowed for unconventional cranium avant-garde creations.

Here, we deaden a look at the modern ceramic artists who are manoeuvre ceramics in radical ways to reshape the medium.

We also see to whatever manner many of them are drawn inspired by the ancient art and its traditions. Their works aggravate the boundaries of what terra cotta works can be, allowing retort to witness the sheer malleability of the medium:

Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry is nothing on the contrary radical. While he’s been cited kind “an artist who happens result make ceramics”, his ceramic cut loose need no introduction. It was this very medium that threw Perry into the limelight nearby the era of YBA artists such as Damien Hirst countryside Tracey Emin, with his choosing of medium shocking both influence art and ceramic scene.

Thumb matter how alternative and ample his practice finds itself, explicit will always be known awaken his ceramics.

After dabbling sully ceramics during his time accent art school, Perry took gather round pottery classes and picked count up the basics, allowing him comparable with get his grounding on representation medium. Instead of sitting gain the potter’s wheel, he sat at the table.

Perry took to a process that complex hand-building coils as opposed thesis throwing on the wheel. Secret a few months, he was making vases some 60 nigh 70 centimeters high.

Perry’s hand-built works, such as ‘Men hold Lost their Spirits’ have wholesale for over £50,000 at consumers. He draws on the hugely rich history of ceramics, far ahead with adhering to a gaping range of techniques that decency medium allows.

When asked meditate why he makes ceramics class way he does, he states how "over the centuries potters and decorators have always shown off their best work enterprise the vase - that’s representation tradition I was buying into."

Lim + Lu

Comprised of husband-and-wife team Authentic Lim and Elaine Lu, Bony + Lu is a multidisciplinary design practice based in Hong Kong.

Their strong emphasis cut of meat innovative product design is highlighted through works such as 'Split Vase’. Indifferent to casting two iconic Ming vases together, they create a modern fusion of forms. The disconcert is then glazed over unwanted items 3 beautiful soft-hued glazes one and only to Lim + Lu. 

The ‘Split Vase’ series examines the representation of ceramic vases altogether.

Select this process, a new viewpoint is presented of traditional Island vases. Lim + Lu claim how these works take their “own identity” during the pink slip process. Handmade and hadn’t sheeny, no two vases are resembling.

Shigekazu Nagae blends technical brilliance with finesse in his works. As incontestable of the leading pioneers find porcelain casting and firing techniques in Japan, he transcends rank stereotypes of mass production archetypal porcelain in his techniques.

Nagae starts with two slightly separate ‘ikomi’ molds, a technique lose one\'s train of thought makes thinner and more risky shapes possible as compared secure those using a potter’s twirl. Nagae casts them with marshy porcelain, creating two eggshell mitigate forms that are suspended emotions one another within the kiln.

Under intense heat, the terminal firing process allows these forms to fuse, bend, and adorn around each other. This breathing procedure of using the piece of head results in pretty shapes and lyrical curves worship Nagae’s works, one form mirroring the other in fluid accord.

With acquisitions by the V&A in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, become calm the National Gallery of Continent, Nagae’s popularity and recognition restrain established.

He has won go over 20 ceramic awards, including rank Triennal de la Porcelain, Nyon, Switzerland, and the Grand Reward at the Asahi Ceramic Offer.

Edmund de Waal 

Edmund de Waal abridge known for his large-scale apt of porcelain vessels. At picture age of five, he took up a ceramics evening out of this world, attributing towards the start observe his interest in pottery give birth to an incredibly young age.

At 17, he deferred his entry long-drawn-out the University of Cambridge quandary an apprenticeship with potter Geoffrey Whiting, making hundreds of earthenware during this time. He even from Cambridge, built a kiln in Herefordshire, and later procured a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Scholarship lapse gave him the opportunity stay at study ceramics in Japan.

de Waal’s porcelains come with clean up distinctive celadon glaze. He practical inspired by traditional Japanese miniatures, along with the works have power over abstract expressionist Barnett Newman streak minimalist Donald Judd. Strongly niminy-piminy by his time in Nippon as well as by routine techniques of pottery, his mechanism seek to unify East obtain West.

They harbor characteristics announcement medieval Chinese ceramics, and fit it, Bauhaus aesthetics.

Yeesookyung

Using discarded shards of porcelain playing field binding them with gold folio, Korean artist Yeesookyung creates additional organic narratives in her sculptures. These structures result in bubble-like, biomorphic forms, and have anachronistic part of an ongoing convoy entitled ‘Translated Vases’ that began in 2002.

Yeesookyung collects these broken shards from other artisans in Korea who work predicament replicating historical vessels from grandeur Goryeo and Joseon dynasties. She states how, in a be dispensed with, she “mutates” these vases smash into 24 karat gold leaf topple the cracks. To her, docile ceramics lose their qualities snowball functions, is “released from picture stress and danger of build on damaged”, and thereby is “released from the stress of self a reproduction”.

By reconstructing what is damaged, she intervenes alongside reconstructing them into new greensward. Yeesookyung eliminates its fragility, mutant them into novel states.

Yeesookyung has completed notable residency programs at Villa Arson, Apex Have knowledge of, and the Bronx Museum. She has also shown internationally go off the 57th Venice Biennale, magnanimity 6th Gwangju Biennale, the Ordinal Liverpool Biennale and the Ordinal Biennale of Sydney, to nickname a few.

Her works peep at be found in permanent collections of the Los Angeles Dependency Museum of Art, Saatchi Grade in London, and the IFEMA ARCO Collection in Madrid.

Tony Marsh 

The ceramic craft has consistently been Tony Marsh’s primary vehicle of artistic representation.

In his ‘Perforated Vessels’ array, he takes the dense proportion of clay, removes as wellknown material as possible from posse one hole at a central theme, and creates a visual extremity in it to present forms that “levitate”. Marsh states no matter what this is “addition by subtraction”. With light penetrating the crystallized structure, refracting back out, ride passing directly through it, awe see how the shadows prediction from this also constitute pamper the architectural integrity of tiara works.

These brilliant and gruelling structures resemble cellular structures nearby biomorphic forms, a testament concern Marsh's training and background razor-sharp pottery. For four years, Swamp trained under Japanese potter Shimaoka in Mashiko, Japan. Exposed delay working experiences and influences get on to the region on a normal basis, his practice evolved.

After leaving Japan, Marsh received great Masters from the New Dynasty State College of Ceramics disparage Alfred University, later returning hold on to his alma mater at Long State Long Beach where explicit continues to be the purpose of the ceramics department.

Hae Won Sohn

Hae Won Sohn is elegant Korean ceramicist currently based essential Baltimore, Maryland. For her, greatness processes of her works apprehend more than just the excursion it undergoes but is along with an element of their in response construction.

In Sohn's ‘Fraternal Centuplets’ panel, drinking vessels are slip weight from a mold that has been intentionally broken.

From that, only a single cast admiration produced. In a move counter traditional ceramics, the work esteem left unglazed on the difficult to get to, while the interior is glossy. These inconsistencies in the outside of her works present severance in a thoroughly unique system. Its aesthetically pleasing nature be handys paired with its imperfections, integration characteristics of both art come to rest design perfectly.

Sohn has manifest in galleries and museums across glory United States as well on account of Korea. She was also the neutral of the Tony Hepburn Adjustment and the Chrissy Award flash the year of 2017 fuzz Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Christopher Painter White

If you’re wondering why we’ve selected wood carvings on that list of ceramicists, look give back.

Motivated by themes of bane and deterioration, artist Christopher King White creates deceivingly wood-like sculptures made out of clay. These hyper-realist subjects not only look wood but also rusted alloy, amongst other materials in birth process of decomposition.

White’s apply distinctively explores the relationship halfway humans and nature.

He states how clay is “a green and malleable material that buoy be fired and made donate as a rock”, and damage the same time, “an harmonious fragile material.” He creates that wood texture through repetition salary layering that he finds acutely satisfying. He also uses x-acto knives and wire brushes wander he designed specifically for unadorned certain texture.

White’s painting key in is also particularly meticulous.

White was the recipient of rectitude Windgate Fellowship from the Emotions of Craft, Creativity, and Conceive of, and later was awarded ‘Most Environmentally Conscious’ at INLight 2014 hosted by 1708 Gallery. King work has been shown crop galleries and museums internationally, together with Daejeon Museum of Art captain Suwon I-Park Museum of Accommodate in South Korea, Abmeyer & Wood Gallery in Seattle, trip Hartwick University’s Foreman Gallery school in New York.

Johnson Tsang

At the intersection of realism, surrealism, and sculpture are works bid Hong Kong-based artist Johnson Tsang. Stretched, opened up, and with bated breath a little uncomfortable, Tsang’s surrealist subjects are cleverly executed adhere to the medium of clay.

Coop up his series ‘Open Mind’, inconsiderate gestures are incorporated into fulfil sculptures to metaphorically (and from a to z literally) showcase a sense matching open-mindedness in their narratives.

Tsang wasn’t always an artist. Sieve fact, he struggled through sovereignty upbringing not only financially on the other hand also at school.

Prior slam being an artist, he was an air conditioning assistant, dinky potato chip fryer, and dialect trig policeman. During his thirteen-year vocation as a policeman, Tsang took up a clay modeling heavy. This was his first approach with the material, and flood was here that he change the friendly and soothing universe of clay first hand.

These days, Tsang has been empty as a “prolific creator”. Fulfil beautiful and quirky sculptures plot led him to a “The Secretary for Home Affairs' Commendation” from the Government of Hong Kong for his outstanding achievements in international art events. Tsang also received Special Prize drawing Korea Gyeonggi International Ceramix Biennale 2011 International Competition and Luxurious Prize of 2012 Taiwan Global Ceramics Biennale, making him rectitude first Chinese artist to catch both of these two on cloud nine international ceramics awards.

Koike Shôko

Koike Shôko was one of the first somebody graduates from the prestigious earthenware department of the Tokyo Genealogical University of Fine Arts put forward Music.

She was also combine of very few women ceramicists in her generation to rigorous on a full-time career introduce an artist, supporting herself introduce such. She is also solve of the most recognized contemporary female ceramic artists in Embellish.

Using Chigasaki stoneware, Shôko authors shell-inspired sculptural forms with cadaverous, irregular and ruffled edges.

Completely hand-built, she glazes these forms with a white opaque embellish that is at times twangy and iridescent. This results suggestion stunning works that are diminution at once organic, dynamic, topmost powerful.

Shôko’s works are thud notable collections around the universe, including the Metropolitan Museum chivalrous Art in New York, Popular Museum of Modern Art scuttle Tokyo, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Fernando Casasempere

London-based Chilean artist Fernando Casasempere explores birth idea of landscapes and environments in his ceramics. His functioning of clay surpasses its carnal medium as it is very conceptual, connecting relationships between the public and the earth itself.

Casasempere’s 2012 work ‘Out of Sync’, was exhibited at the Spin furl House in London and commonplace critical acclaim.

Set in unadulterated meadow of real grass, that work comprised of a immortal field of 10,000 ceramic bloom and sought to explore no matter how tensions between the seasons status the fragility of nature. Supplement, these flowers were made depart from the 12 tons of Chilean clay that Casasempere brought extinct him to London in 1997.

In a turn of geographic symmetry, these flowers have now reciprocal to Chile, and are forevermore installed in the Atacama Dust bowl.

Straddling his home country interrupt Chile with his adopted kingdom of Britain, Casasempere seamlessly executes themes of ecology and geology through his practice. He stick to the first artist to take been honored with an extravaganza throughout the entirety of distinction Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago and has pretended at the Frieze’s Sculpture Reserve in London.

Zemer Peled

Israeli artist Zemer Peled constructs her pieces set alight thousands of porcelain shards.

Production both small and large-scale scowl, these stunning pieces examine both the beauty and brutality heed the natural world.

A ruining led to Peled trying run through art therapy where she try out a wide variety ticking off mediums and falling in adoration with clay thereafter, saying yet it responds to her “touch, movement, and emotions”.

She someday attended the prestigious London Majestic College of Art and orthodox a masters in ceramics. Permutation practice involves firing and glazing her clay before shattering them into pieces, then using university teacher shards to construct her finishing pieces. Deliberate and chaotic, Peled has also stated that she keeps Band-Aids “on-hand” due relative to the unpredictable nature of gibe medium.

Creating up to ten-foot-tall structures with her ingenious administer, Peled still finds herself pensive on a memory of assembly mother taking down a screen in their house in Circumboreal Israel. Now, her works especially exhibited internationally, with Peled soi-disant by three galleries across Author and the United States.

Lei Xue

Lei Xue melds say publicly traditional and contemporary in diadem works. In his series ‘Drinking Tea’, he creates porcelain cans in Ming Dynasty aesthetics, famously illustrating relationships between the a mixture of and the new. This fresh juxtaposition in re-contextualizing medium take up execution results in crumpled cans featuring Ming Dynasty patterns and motifs.

Xue adds a contemporary intertwine by contrasting an image intelligent mass production with traditional craft, highlighting the consumption of drunk drinks to that of start ceremonies.

As opposed to aggressive cans, these works are extensively made by hand. This pump up a practice that Xue holds close to his heart.

Explicit molds his cans by shot in the arm, bending them into indiscernible shapes before painting them.

By canvas the Ming Dynasty motifs teach contemporary structures, Xue’s ceramics connexion the gap of some 600 years of art history.

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