RELAY 21-Ceramic 3rd Relay

Charlotte Nielsen, Mathew McConnell, Wu Yu-Pei, Liu Xi, Naoki Kato, Andres Anza Sep 24-Nov 30

Charlotte Nielsen
Charlotte Nielsen was born in 1965. For more than 20 years she has worked professionally as a ceramist. She has attended curated exhibitions, both at home and abroad, and received various prizes.
In 1985 Nielsen went to pottery school where her strong interest in the craft itself grew. After a course at a Danish Folk High School in the early 1990s, she started a workshop communion, Brændpunktet (The Ignition Point), in Copenhagen.
Here it became clear to her that it was form rather than function that held her interest.
In the late 1990s, she worked as assistant for ceramicist Christian Bruun, who was strongly inspired by an American tradition with great emphasis on material and firing processes. She attended the International Ceramics Center in Western Zealand, Denmark, where she worked with wood firing and soda firing, which later led her to explore raku firing.
Since 2008 she has been living in the countryside where she has her own workshop and showroom. She is a member of the artists' associations "Cromisterne" and Danish Craftsmen and Designers.

Mathew McConnell
The works in this series continue McConnell’s long exploration into the persistent problems of invention, originality, and creative influence in art-making. Using duplication as a primary
tool for exploring these questions, McConnell works directly from images of contemporary art—selecting, stealing, stretching, and manipulating sources—wringing them for inspiration for his idiosyncratic processes.

Mathew McConnell (b. 1979, Johnstown, PA) holds an MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a BFA from Valdosta State University in Georgia. He has held numerous solo exhibitions including at Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami and the Jane Hartsook Gallery at Greenwich House Pottery in NYC. His works have been included in over 60 group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Mathew has lectured widely, and has been subject of feature-length articles in Ceramics Art and Perception, Ceramics Monthly, and New Ceramics. He has received an Emerging Artist Award from the National Council on Education in Ceramic Art, and has been an Artist in Residence at the Archie Bray Foundation, Greenwich House Pottery, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. He serves as an Associate Professor of Ceramics at the University of Arkansas School of Art.

Wu, Yu-Pei
Artist Wu, Yu-Pei has tried to integrate the natural existence of clay into ceramic art since 2015. Wu is trying to break away from the dependence on technique in the working process so that her works will not be affected by any external forces, and use the simplest way, stacking, to show their nature.

In her "Clay and Glaze" works, "Series 1" and "Series 2" start from the material of clay. She regards clay as the subject. After repeatedly baking, the surface of the work shows the natural shrinkage of the glaze. Then, Wu removes the mound under the glaze, leaving only the top layer of glaze with a thin layer of clay powder. At this time, the clay is attached to the glaze or even blended into the glaze instead. The clay powder was not subject anymore. According to the nature of the clay, clay is the subject, and a glaze is only an object attached to the surface of the clay. However, in her works, the glaze is the subject and the clay is the object which is attached to the glaze. The relationship between the clay and glaze is opposed. In other words, there is no subject without the object.

Wu was born in Yunlin, Taiwan in 1990. She studied in the Department of Sculpture, National Taiwan University of the Arts, and the Department of Fine Arts, National Taipei University of the Arts. She is committed to finding new possibilities in ceramics. She won the grand prize, the 2016 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale and has the rich experience of cooperating with foreign ceramic art associations, including the 2013 East Asian Contemporary Ceramics Exhibition at the Japan Shigaraki Ceramic Museum, Japan; 2014 Contemporary Ceramic in Asia Exhibition at the Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Korea; 2018 International Sculpture Festa at Hangaram Art Museum, Korea and others. Also, she participated in exhibitions in Taiwan, including the 2016 TAIWAN Ceramics Biennale at City Yingge Ceramics Museum; 2017 Infinite Forms The Contemporary Ceramics at Yingge Ceramics Museum; 2018 Calling for a Miracle -Wu Yu-Pei solo exhibition at Yingge Ceramics Museum. Her works are collected in Yingge Ceramics Museum and private collections.

Liu Xi
Liu Xi was born in Shandong province, China, in 1986. Upon her graduation from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She lives and works in between Shanghai and Jingdezhen. While appropriating new formations, surfaces and materials, Liu Xi continues to push the technical and esthetical boundaries of ceramics. Immaculately produced and innately sensual, her sculptural creations explore the themes of sexuality and love, freedom and constraints, identity and self- discovery, femininity and masculinity, among many others. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in China and abroad including, Portugal, Norway, Spain, Korea, the United Kingdom, USA. Her works have been included in various international Ceramics Biennales and collected top prizes and honorable mentions. Always ready to pursue new creative opportunities, she actively participates in residency programs, in Bali, Taiwan Mexico, and Indian. Liu Xi’s works have entered public collections of New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan, and Ajuntament del Vendrell in Spain, and Museu de Ceramica de L’alcora in Valencia, Spain, Gaya Ceramic Arts Center, Bali, Indonesia, White Rabbit Collections, Sydney, Australia and so on.

Naoki Kato
“Ceramics are fragile, which makes them beautiful. The characteristic of ceramics is that no matter how hard the material looks, it is very fragile. Focusing on this, I made a ceramic piece that seems to crack with just a light touch.” The artist Naoki Kato believes that all pottery has the characteristic of being damaged. His works imitate the tissues of plants and animal bones in nature while maintaining the original appearance of porcelain. By carefully observing the structural elements in nature, he tried to burn out seemingly fragile but not easily collapsed structures to create new possibilities.

Japanese artist Naoki Kato was born in Okayama, Japan in 1979. He graduated with his Bachelor in Art Education from Okayama University, Japan. Kato has many awards for his ceramic artworks, such as the Bronze Prize of GYEONGGI International Ceramic Competition in 2017. In 2020, he was awarded Gold Prize of Taiwan International Ceramics Competition, and third prize of FRANZ Riding Star Prize. His works are collected in Yingge Ceramics Museum and Korea Ceramic Foundation.

Andres Anza
Andres Anza was born on January 25, 1991, in Monterrey, Mexico.
Graduated from the Bachelor of Arts at the University of Monterrey (2014).

For the past 10 years, Andrés has used ceramics as a medium to create amorphous beings that seem to belong to a known ecosystem but result unrecognizable because they are extracted from abstract imagination. The volume, the relief, and the excessive texture require that pieces always have dierent angles of appreciation, seeing them is an exercise of recognition and an invitation to understand what we do not know. His work has participated in numerous exhibitions in the city of Monterrey, Guadalajara, and Mexico City, of which the Emerging Art Biennial and the UNAM Bienal stand out, samples in which he received Honorable Mentions. His work has also been exhibited in dierent cities in the United States.

Curator: Lingyi Cheng/ YiCOLLECTA