Gallery Where is pleased to announce the opening of Yu Mengtong's solo exhibition "RECIPIENCE" on October 22, 2023. The exhibition shows a series of Yu's new works, exploring the comparative relationship between life, land, and nature. The central imagery in the exhibition is the "containers," which represent not only the literal meaning of storage on a material level but also serves as a medium for life, containing and carrying the connections between different materials and traces of life.
Before entering the exhibition space, audience will first encounter the artist's unglazed clay leaves and porcelain leaves ("Clay Leaves - Bodhi tree" and "Porcelain Leaves - Lilac") "grafted" onto two trees in front of the gallery. These entities temporarily merge together, but their relationship will be disrupted by unpredictable rainfall – the former turning into mud and seeping into the ground, while the latter continues to thrive and grow. In this context, the porcelain leaves participate in the long life of these two trees as nutrients, metaphorically suggesting the substitution of life between materials.
The choice of trees as sculptural subjects is because, in the artist's view, "trees provide small lives with living and secluded spaces, and offer ecological spaces for breathing and adjustment. Trees connect the above-ground and underground worlds through their own life. The roots extend downward, while the branches reach upward. Similarly, the tree bark links the external world with its own living space."
In the new series "Remote Boundaries," the artist continues her previous working method through collecting, molding, reversing, and porcelainizing tree bark. From the outside, these works resemble stone boxes, while the interior delicately retains the textured folds of the bark, preserving the life characteristics of the tree within. The sculptural forms appear as containers of life. The concept of containers also manifests in various viewing relationships within the exhibition space. The mirrored space at the top accommodates the intersecting gazes between the viewer and the sculptures. Within the installation "Vessel," the clay molds filled with water slowly dissolve and collapse over the course of the exhibition.
All these restrained relationships find their answers in the exhibition's eponymous video work, "Recipience". The artist, dressed in black attire, sequentially passes through urban outskirts, graveyards, and wilderness, eventually reaching a forest. She buries the unglazed porcelain box that she holds in hands in the soil, covering it with withered leaves. The porcelain box, following the laws of nature, transform into soil. From the outcome, everything returns to its original state, as if no restoration or even "creation" ever took place. However, observing the process, the life containers shaped by the soil transform back into the soil, returning to nature, as if demonstrating a nearly bare order of life.
When Yu Mengtong employs porcelain-making as a contemporary working method, the essential difference lies not in using ceramics as a medium but, rather, in using soil as a medium. This signifies that the artist captures and traces the topological relationship between the primary material (soil) and the formed object (tree). It goes beyond mere translation and association in form while preserving the natural attributes of the material. Whether it is the placement of sculptures within a holistic relationship for viewing or the performative creation based on the sculptures, it seems to reveal the artist's ambiguous attitude toward sculptural creation. "A sculpture" is not just "a sculpture" but encompasses the continuous process and order of its birth and destination.
By substituting life for life, allowing trees to be trees, and returning soil to the land, it addresses the fundamental question of the order of life.
Yu Mengtong (b. 1996) Graduated with a Bachelor's and MFA degree in Ceramic Art and Design from the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University. She is currently taking the doctoral program at the Department of Ceramic Art and Design, Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University. Yu Mengtong uses porcelain as a working method, employing ceramic molding techniques and the tenacity of clay materials to reverse the internal and external spaces of life forms, such as shells, fishes and trees. The opening and flipping of shells romantically echo the ebb and flow of tides, resembling the waxing and waning of the moon. Trees, connect the two worlds of above and below through their life, with roots extending downwards and branches reaching upwards. The tree bark links the external world with its own life space. Yu Mengtong uses "life vessels" as imagery, continuously exploring the analogous relationship between life, land, and nature...