Spotted | Ai Weiwei’s Garden Sculptures, Porcelain Rebar, Tied + Bound Stones and more!

Welcome to Spotted, our bi-weekly mega-share of our favorite artworks from the worlds of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics. In this edition we showcase works from various artists like Leoncillo Leonardi as well as feature works from a beautiful invitational exhibition, but first we’ll pluck Ai Weiwei’s lush garden sculptures to lead the pack.

Ai Weiwei

Chinese-born artist and activist, Ai Weiwei is one of the most definitive voices of the 21st century. Ai Weiwei’s Ai Weiwei at Meijer Gardens: Natural State  (Grand Rapids, Michigan, January 27 – August 20, 2017) is his first show in the upper American Midwest as well as the first of its kind for the artist at a botanical garden or sculpture park.

Known to work in a wide variety of contexts and scale, his ability to transform materials to share his ideas, concerns and vision has given rise to a critically acclaimed and widely appreciated body of work.

Check out this interesting read from Hyperallergic.

Seung-taek Lee

Gallery Hyundai and Lévy Gorvy presented an exhibition (May 8 – June 28, 2017) at the Palazzo Caboto in Venice showcasing decades of rarely seen work from the multidisciplinary Korean experimental artist Seung-taek Lee (b. 1932). The exhibition featured over 50 works by Lee from the late 1950s to the early 80s including the stone goddol and the tied stone. The exhibition included installation, photography and sculpture meaningful to the artist.

A solitary figure unbound by the strictures of a movement or group, Lee has described the artist’s task as that of “connecting different worlds in search of another realm.” His art moves between the material and the metaphysical, conceiving art and philosophy as parallel pursuits. Privileging no single medium, his oeuvre spans several, incorporating aspects of painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and performance, often within the same piece. Notions of negation—which he alternately refers to as “dematerialization,” “anti-concept,” and “non-sculpture”—structure his approach, by which he transforms ordinary objects, imbuing them with multiple meanings and affects.

Anja Bache

Check out this outdoor site-specific installation Lines of Memories by Anja Bache in front of Alfred Ceramic Art Museum. Project included  a video inside as well art-installations at New York State College of Ceramic Art.

Anja Margrethe Bache reflects in her artwork on the nature of time and the narrative telling of local history by inverting archeological excavation and creating artifacts manipulated into time axis – LINES OF MEMORIES. With the sediments of earth she hereby construct her own artistic narrative of Alfred.

In 2019 Anja Margrethe Bache will excavate her ceramic buried in the earth, investigate the changes and restore them for new exhibitions in USA.

San Angelo Ceramic Invitational Exhibition

The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts hosts a juried ceramic competition every other year. The competition is open to all artists who are residents of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This year was an invitational (April 21 – July 2, 2017). Participating artists included Bonnie Lynch, whose stunning large vessels were on display and Brian Molanphy with his grouped wall hangings.

Leoncillo Leonardi

Leoncillo Leonardi (1915 – 1968) was an Italian visual artist.  His work has had several gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Repetto Gallery and at the C+N Canepaneri, Milan. Many works by the artist have been sold at auction, including ‘San Sebastiano’ sold at Christie’s Milan ‘Milan Modern and Contemporary’ in 2017 for $87,449.

“Crete, my clay, my artificial matter, but charged by metaphor of all that I have seen, loved, of what I have been close to, of the things I have in it, with which, after all, I have, at times, identified.” – Leonardi

Do you love or loathe these works from the worlds of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics? Let us know in the comments.