ART CITIES:Hong Kong-Edmund de Waal
Edmund de Waal (Edmund Arthur Lowndes de Waal), is best known for his large scale installations of porcelain vessels. Much of Edmund’s recent work has been concerned with ideas of collecting and collections, how objects are kept together, lost, stolen or dispersed. His work comes out of a dialogue between Minimalism, Architecture and Music, and is informed by his passion for literature.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Archive
A potter since childhood and an acclaimed writer, de Waal makes porcelain works that function as repositories of human memory and experience. Drawing equally from Eastern and Western traditions, Edmund de Waal ‘s works blend a minimalist visual language with invocations of the written word, positing the act of collection of objects, texts, materials, and thoughts, as an artistic form. Edmund de Waal’s solo exhibition “cold mountain clay” takes its title from the famed Cold Mountain poems, a series of verses by the monk Hanshan, who, according to legend, lived as a recluse on a Chinese mountaintop during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). Composed with diaristic frankness and intensity, the poems address the unavoidable passage of time and trace the introspective state that comes with monastic solitude. Inspired by Hanshan’s practice of writing on rocks, tree trunks, and cave walls—thereby letting the elements erode his verses—de Waal’s new works are made through a cycle of inscription and effacement. He begins by coating a wood panel in liquid kaolin; while the slip is still wet, he floats flecks of gold leaf and writes lines of Hanshan’s poetry in graphite, oil stick, and charcoal. He then brushes these marks with additional layers of slip, repeating the process multiple times to produce a “fugitive poem” a palimpsest of text that emulates the haze of memory. Exhibited with this new series will be a selection of wall-mounted and freestanding works, some of which were included in elective affinities, de Waal’s installation at the Frick Collection, New York, in 2019. Made in white or black porcelain, the vessels are arranged alongside elements of gold, alabaster, marble, or steel. Held in space within vitrines, their spatial variations evoke musical scores or poetic stanzas.
Photo: Edmund de Waal, cold mountain, I, 2020 Kaolin, gold leaf, graphite, compressed charcoal, and oil stick on oak and ash, in aluminum frame, 25 × 49 × 5 cm, © Edmund de Waal, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
Info: Gagosian Gallery, 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 20/11/2020-9/1/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com
