Reminder: Last day – EYE&EYE Ceramic Glaze Painting Exhibition

The highly-anticipated “EYE&EYE Ceramic Glaze Painting Exhibition” will conclude on October 31. This exhibition, featuring exquisite ceramic glaze paintings from Chinese and Swedish artists, has garnered widespread attention from art circles and the general public alike. Recently, Zhao Yan, Associate Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, graduate supervisor, and editor of the World Art journal, published a signed article titled “The Tempering of Chance and the Condensation of Eternity”, which is reposted in full below.

The Tempering of Chance and the Condensation of Eternity

– On Ceramic Artworks of PuMu and Torsten Jurell

Recently, at “EYE&EYE Ceramic Glaze Painting Exhibition” held at China Cultural Center in Stockholm, Chinese artist PuMu (Huang Weihong) and Swedish artist Torsten ‘Toto’ Jurell jointly presented their high-temperature ceramic glaze paintings, along with some sculptures and videos, all created in recent years in Jingdezhen. Both artists focus on using the same ancient artistic medium, yet present distinctly different artistic styles and concepts, making this exhibition a display of individual artistic approach, as well as a discussion and dialogue centered around the same artistic medium. Their works reveal the possibilities for artistic expression that such ancient and special artistic technique and medium holds in the present day.

High-temperature colored glaze embodies aesthetics of uncertainty. This ancient art has strict procedural requirements. Each step — preparing clay, making panels, drawing, glazing, and firing — relies on long-term accumulation of experience and repeated trial and error to achieve ideal results. Even so, during the kiln-firing process, many uncertain factors still influence the final outcome of the work. In the high-temperature gas kiln firing process they employ, it is not only difficult to produce two identical pieces, but every kiln opening is a process coexisting with surprise and disappointment. This in itself is an artistic adventure and challenge. For artists, being able to continually discover fresh stimuli and possibilities within an art form that spans millennia and carries profound cultural significance is an exciting experiment, but also arduous labor. Engaging in ceramic glaze painting means returning to nature, returning to clay, returning to the body — it is about exploring new possibilities amidst dust, mud, high temperatures, and sweat, seeking a certain determined chance within multiple uncertainties, and transforming it into artistic eternity.

The works of PuMu and Torsten Jurell have different appearances. Despite their different artistic paths, they share the aesthetics of uncertainty embedded in this special medium, conducting in-depth explorations into the expressive tension and unpredictability of glaze colors.PuMu’s ceramic glaze painting display several different facets. As an artist trained in professional mural painting, her student-era participation in the restoration of ancient Chinese temple murals profoundly influenced her. One direction in her creative work involves transforming images from traditional Chinese art (mainly folk art images) into new expressions presented in her ceramic panels. For instance, her Images of the Mountains and Seas and Door Gods series are works that transform and re-create traditional artistic schemas. Furthermore, she experiments with creating large-scale ceramic panels, such as Two Generations and Priya. Producing such large-sized works is in itself a challenge. PuMu’s Condensation series is a form of pure abstract expression. In these works, she experiments with different glaze color effects by altering glaze compositions and ratios (such as adding raw ores) to achieve different firing results. She transforms the glaze colors traditionally used for decoration in porcelain into a complex expressive medium, encompassing not only rich colors and a sense of depth but also various textural effects and qualities. It could be said that through the tempering of high heat, rich materiality and bodily labor are condensed together.

Torsten Jurell is a well-known Swedish artist with several decades of creative experience. His artistic practice involves a variety of media, such as: woodcarving, bronze, plastic, glass and ceramic sculptures and reliefs, oil painting, printmaking, photography, embroidery, sound and light installations, video, and writing. He has been based in the “Porcelain Capital”,  Jingdezhen, since 2011, exploring different modes of expression in ceramic art. His most influential exhibition in China was the 2017 solo show “Pranks in the Moonlight” at CAFA Art Museum in Beijing. Jurell’s ceramic works mainly take two forms: ceramic figurative sculptures and ceramic glaze paintings. These works possess a Dadaist freedom and unrestrained quality, yet retain a poetic narrative. He does not let the forms become completely abstract but pushes expressiveness to its most extreme degree within recognizable boundaries. His ceramic figurative sculptures and painted figures are diverse in form and posture. When these works are presented collectively in an exhibition space with a theatricalized appearance, it resembles a visualized “La Comédie Humaine”. The diversity embodied in the works and their themes is, as the artist himself says, “just like the richness of life itself.”

When the ceramic works of both artists are exhibited together, a multi-dimensional dialogue emerges — one of harmony in diversity. On one hand, they are deeply attracted to the aesthetics of uncertainty inherent in ceramic art and have long devoted themselves to it. Furthermore, their works both show, to varying degrees, attempts to combine this special material, ceramic, with folk art forms: for PuMu, it is the translation and reconstruction of traditional Chinese folk images and the expressive tension brought by kiln transformation of glazes; for Jurell, it is the integration of poetic narrative and theatrical exploration drawn from folk art. On the other hand, the exhibition reveals the differences in how two artists of different genders, ages, and cultural backgrounds understand and express themselves through this special artistic form — ceramics, which is simultaneously an ancient technology, craft, and medium. This also reflects the multiple possibilities that ceramics hold in contemporary artistic creation. As a young artist, PuMu is diligently exploring, seeking a more personal and expressive artistic style. As an established artist, Jurel is also still exploring, pursuing new artistic inspiration through different media and means of expression. Regardless, the exploration itself is important, and ceramics provide ample space for this exploration. It is precisely within this space that chance, through constant tempering, can at a certain moment be condensed into eternity — perhaps this is the charm of ceramics, and indeed, of art itself.