Brilliance Transformed: Exhibition of Taiwan Ceramic Art Masters — Co-organized by Taipei Tech and the Yingge Ceramics Muse
Exhibition Period｜2023/10/26～11/21
"Brilliance Transformed" reflects on the historical trajectory of Taiwan’s ceramic competitions and honorary accolades. This extraordinary exhibition brings together 53 landmark pieces by the recipients of Taiwan’s highest ceramic honors—the Taiwan Ceramics Awards' Lifetime Achievement Award (Excellence Award) and the Taiwan Ceramic Society’s Contribution Award. Spanning 31 years from 1985 to 2016, these artists have used Taiwan’s soil as their nourishment, cultivating a distinct visual language unique to Taiwanese ceramic culture. The Sino-Japanese Modern Ceramic Art Exhibition, held at the National Museum of History in 1981, served as the watershed moment that ignited contemporary ceramic art in Taiwan. Both internal and external artistic stimuli prompted ceramicists to channel their work into a profound care for society, a deep awareness of nature, and an exploration of self-identity, officially turning clay into a primary medium for creative expression. Mastering the unpredictable elements of earth and fire, Yang Yuan-tai carves the vast, inclusive embrace of the Taiwanese landscape into his sculptures. Liu Chen-chou projects a meditative psychological space onto rolling mountain ridges using warm, tranquil lines. Glaze transforms into a free-spirited paintbrush under the hands of Fan Zhen-jin, whose vivid colors dance dynamically across sylvan scenes. As the viewer’s eye follows the melting, fluid movement of Tsai Rong-yu’s glazes, the rich layered textures reveal a lifelong quest for form, quality, color, and absolute beauty. Lin Zhen-long opts for abstract structures to build a harmonious landscape where nature and humanity coexist. The exhibition also spotlights two female masters: Yang Wen-ni and Deng Hui-fen. Presenting via wall reliefs and grand, large-scale installations, their work is both delicate and charged with immense energy, showcasing exceptional wisdom in the way they sculpt surface textures and dissect points, lines, and planes. Wu Ming-yi takes inherited, traditional pottery techniques and continuously challenges them, rewriting the boundaries of what clay can achieve. Wang Long-de deploys mixed media and complex, varied firing styles to build imaginative dimensions of space. Meanwhile, Lu Zhao-xin collaborates with artists from the Tai-Hwa Pottery studio to fully manifest the unique painted ceramic heritage of Yingge—where local cultural aesthetics meet the intersection of art, science, and technical mastery. These Taiwanese ceramic giants have established a rich, thriving cultural legacy, using their craft to express a deep-seated commitment to the land, humanity, society, and ecological sustainability. Jointly curated by the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum and National Taipei University of Technology (Taipei Tech), we extend our heartfelt gratitude to these master artists for their transcendent contributions to modern Taiwanese ceramics. Through this exhibition, we honor their dedication to protecting and passing down the flame of Taiwanese cultural sustainability.
Performance Highlights