Confrontation

Guanghai sets out to explore a new future-facing practice, melding classical training in Chinese ceramics with an urge to reflect his contemporary surrounds, and an increased insertion of Western styles and techniques. ‘Confrontations’ finds iconography in an abstracted slice of sculpture, the celadon-glazed classical bust of the buddha sliced vertically at the shoulders, then mirrored and joined with rough pipe-like ceramic appendages; a combination of the religious and profanely industrial. The sense is heightened with the exposure of the “guts” of the bodies — both interiors fitted with scaffold, each carefully brushed and coated with a metallic enamel to reinterpret the relative values of object and depiction.