Plein Soleil / Galaxies
In the process of making my soda-fired petri dishes, I'm struck by their shard-ness – as artworks, they are impenetrable, containing a galaxy of materials. To quote William Blake, "To see a World in a Grain of Sand"—a line that resonates profoundly with the essence of these objects. Due to their complexity, these shards become impossible to fully comprehend in isolation, necessitating contextualization, such as my approach of using them as building blocks for my architectural pieces. Simultaneously, these shards occupy an enormous amount of space as byproducts of my studio production. The pace at which I created my architectural pieces was significantly slower than the exhilarating process of generating shards...Consequently, there was an urgent need to develop a method for structurally contextualizing these shards in a meaningful way.
In essence, these scanned, then collaged digital works are no different from product photography. I see the tradition of documenting ceramics pieces – gradient backdropped object photography – as an important gap in the history of ceramic arts that is yet to be examined, especially in this digital age.
Ryze Xu
Plein Soleil/Galaxy #2, Winter 2024
Digital Collage/Archival Inkjet Print
Ryze Xu
Plein Soleil/Sunflower#1, Winter 2024
Digital Collage/Archival Inkjet Print
Ryze Xu
Plein Soleil/Perspective Study, Winter 2024
Digital Collage/Archival Inkjet Print