Crossing the boundaries of design, sculpture, ceramics, film, and photography, Taikkun Li firmly believes that breakthrough innovation occurs when we bring down boundaries and encourage disciplines to learn from each other.
We couldn't agree more.
"Born into a cultural family, I readily attribute my earliest art education to my father, a renowned connoisseur of Chinese painting. My father opened that first door to the "ancient wisdom."
Among my study of the great masters, Duchamp stands out for the way in which his work has influenced me, freeing me from limitations and boundaries, and teaching
by his example that everything in life can be artistic creation." (Taikkun Li)
Another ongoing project dating back to 2001, is Drinking Tea, by Lei Xue (b. 1974).
Again, Chinese painter, photographer, sculptor and video artist, he merges modernity and ancient tradition in his creative work. In Drinking Tea, a wide range of crumpled can sculptures has been made out of white porcelain and featuring painted blue patterns and motifs inspired by Ming Dynasty.
For the artist, our restless and disregarding consumption of canned drinks can be dramatically compared to the Tea Cerimony during the Ming Dynasty. If you ever read haiku poems, you know what I mean:
.茶の煙柳と共にそよぐ也 cha no kemuri yanagi to tomo ni soyogu nari
The tea smoke and the willow together trembling
.朝々や茶がむまく成る霧おりる asa-asa ya cha ga mumaku naru kiri oriru
Morning after morning my tea tastes better… falling mist
(Both haikus are by Kobayashi Issa, an 18th/19th century Japanese poet from the village of Kashiwabara in the mountains of Japan’s Shinano Province.)
Least, but not last, Keiko Fukazawa’s (b. 1955) Made in China series, reflecting the artist's numerous art residencies spent in China’s Jingdezhen province, known as the "Porcelain Capital" for its 2000 year old tradition of blue-and-white pottery.
Pottery craftmanship reached a zenith during the Song Dynasty, itself a period of great social and economic change when a highly aestheticized way of life was prized inside the court and out.
Contemporary Chinese pottery sculptures are fairly juxtaposing two visions, not necessarily resonating.
“Today, such issues as ‘Old v. New’, ‘Progress vs. Regression’, ‘Nature vs. Industrialization’, ‘Community vs. The Individual’ and ‘Communism vs. Capitalism’ are challenging China. In my work, I want to find and express the tension, truth, irony and drama at the point at which all these opposites meet, however chaotic that point may be” – says the artist.