RELAY 21-Ceramic 2nd Relay

Zuzana Svatik, Ahryun Lee, Adam Ulen, Lot Brandt, Chu Fang Yi Sep 15-Nov 30

Zuzana Svatik
The artist Zuzana Svatik is engaged in ceramics and painting. Because of the growth environment, she knows that Eastern European countries have fairly rigid prejudices against gender, so she is committed to caring about gender equality issues and seeking her own identity from it.

The theoretical level of the work is based on practice, and reflects the views on the current system through irony of the interrelationships between history, biology and society. In her works, vases are often chosen as shapes. She believes that vases are a kind of prototype, and are directly related to the feeling of our living room and home in the family. This is also a metaphor for the stereotypes of women as housewives, vanity decorations, and stereotypes for housewives. Svatik's work revolves around the social and gender prejudices in Eastern European countries, depicting the impact of her living environment and way of thinking on her.

Zuzana Svatik was born in Slovakia, 1993. She completed her master’s degree at the Ceramics Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in 2018, she specializes in applied art and works mainly in the medium of ceramics. In 2016 she won the Collection of the Year award at BADW with her collection. In 2018, with her work within the Miksmitte project, she won the BADW main prize and became the faces of BADW 2019. In 2020 she presented her work at the exhibition 1000 Vases in Paris, as part of the curated Arthouse Designblok Prague, at the KHG in Berlin and at BADW 2020.

Ahryun Lee
Ahryun is a ceramic artist, designer-maker and skillful craftsman.In 2016 she graduated from Royal College of Art, UK, having studied ceramics in South Korea and UK, she explores numerous creative possibilities by embracing different perspectives between East and West.Her practice has developed in varied ways based on using a combination of professional skills alongside fundamental knowledge of materials.
Popping colours and intriguing textures are the main feature of her work, the unique object is visually material-driven and highly skillful, which contains both aspects between tradition and contemporary.
Her interest is to find the new possibilities in ceramics, in which ways ceramics can be developed. While peering into the area between tradition and contemporary, her objective is to create something extraordinary piece which draw a question about the definition of ceramics and blur the boundaries between Craft, Design and Art.

Ahryun Lee was born in Seoul, Korea. She is a ceramic artist, designer-maker, and skillful craftsman. In 2016 she graduated from Royal College of Art, UK, having studied ceramics in South Korea and UK. Her work has been shown internationally from Korea to Europe and America with various collaborations with galleries and fashion industry now she expands her creativity based near Munich, Bavaria Germany.

Adam Ulen
The artist Adam Ulen from Austria. Most of his works touch topics of “the uncertainty” and “the absurd” in their different appearances and meanings.The main focus of artistic creation is three-dimensional and representational, which includes plastic, figurative, cybernetic and installation works. Aspects of pop culture, surreal and hyper-realistic elements influence the formal implementation.
As a sculptor, he is particularly interested in the materiality of objects. Different materials are used depending on the concept of the individual work. Nevertheless, he always falls back on ceramic materials, whose diverse properties he appreciates very much. But of course my kind of interest in ceramics and my handling of this material differs from that of a ceramic artist.

Adam Ulen was born in Austria. He graduated from Master of Art, Art University Linz (Austria), Department for Ceramics / Plastic Conception, various exhibitions at home and abroad, 'artist in residence stays' in Japan. He participated in “Nakanojo Biennale 2019”, Gunma Prefecture, Nakanojo town, Japan. In 2016, participated Abiko International Open Air Exhibition, Japan.

Lot Brandt
Lot Brandt was born into a family of artists. Both her parents were ceramists. Her hands in clay feel natural. This is how she grew up. I give form to what I feel and see since my childhood: you can say that I could mould before I could walk. She transformed her feelings and what she saw from a young age into form: you can say that she can take shape before she walks. She loves clay. It is pure and honest material. People used it centuries before her. When she sees work created by long lost civilizations, sometimes thousands of years old, she feels connected and amazed…the tendency to tell your story through a hunk of clay is so ancient.

From 1981 to 1985 Lot attended the evening academy in Utrecht; modern oil painting techniques, anatomy and portrait drawing. The urge to transform experiences to ceramic forms, her creative energy, for her, it is innate. To listen to her passion and act upon it, to continuously evolve, are her own rewards.

“It is beautiful and intense that my hands make that what I take in from the world around me and in me” she said.

Chu, Fang Yi
Chu, Fang Yi has a strong interest in images.He often studies oracle bone inscriptions, totems, symbols. because he thinks these are all kinds of information transmission. Because he thinks that these are a way of conveying information.Chu tries to deconstruct his work into a textual root of the picture. There will be a textual structure in the form, but the source comes from the combination of images.In the process of creation of works, the artist deconstructs text and images, sometimes to the most basic unit, which reminds him of the technique of ink and wash, paying attention to the stacking of brushwork, ink technique, and vertical strokes, and the pinch of ceramics. Gestures such as, pressing, squeezing, rubbing, kneading... are very similar, so he combined the two to create, deconstructing the image of the object into a character code, combining the spatial image of ink and ink, and the brushstroke technique into unit graphic symbols. The concept of form is used to express the readability of text and images.

Chu, Fang Yi was born in Taipei 1976, Taiwan. He is now a professional contemporary artist, a member of the UNESCO-International Academy of Ceramics (IAC), and also a full-time instructor in the Department of Material Arts and Design, TNNUA.

In 2008, Chu won the first prize of the Taiwan Ceramic Biennale, one of the world's four major ceramic biennales. In the same year, he was also selected as the International Ceramics Triennial Mino, Japan Executive Committee. 2011, Chu won the special award of the World Ceramics Biennale in Korea. In 2019, Chu received a higher honor-shortlisted of the final on-site selection for the Korea World Ceramics Biennale. Chu also exhibited in the public and private art museums at home and abroad, and won numerous awards and countless collections.

*Since the works are overseas, it will take 2-3 weeks for delivery, please be patient
＊Domestic shipping fee is extra.

Curator: Lingyi Cheng/ YiCOLLECTA