Colliding worlds

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Latest Activity: Apr 22, 2010

Ceramicist Brendan Tang - Manga Ormolu Version 5.0f This traditional Ming-style vase sprouts robotic tubes and mutates into something coolly sci-fi.
Over the past decade, the humble lump of clay has become the site of immense energy, facility, and provocation. Brendan Tang is known for his ability to compress beauty, grotesquerie, humour, and probing intelligence into his quite distinct works. His artistic practice embodies the influences, tensions and contradictions that define the postmodern world.

To this end, his earthenware and mixed-media sculptures enfold Chinese porcelain and French ormolu traditions into contemporary Japanese manga forms. The result is a series of compelling mutations in which blue-and-white Ming-style vases are at first supported and then undermined by shiny robotic arms, legs, bolts, pods, tubes, and tentacles.

The Ming-vase elements take on a curiously organic character, and in some instances appear to be rumpled, deflated, or detached, like flayed skin or severed limbs. This sounds horrible, but really it’s sci-fi/po-mo wonderful. It also speaks eloquently of high and low, tradition and innovation, cultural hybridity, and the impact of technology on the vulnerable human body.