The Consequences of Objects

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Master of Fine Arts Thesis

The Consequences of Objects

ChengOu Yu

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts, School of Art and Design

Division of Ceramic Art

New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University Alfred, New York

2020

ChengOu Yu, MFA

Thesis Advisors:

John Gill, Johnathan Hopp, Matt Kelleher, Walter McConnell, Linda Sikora, Meghan Smythe

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Abstract

My work and research are focused on iconography, culture contract and conflicts, system and logic, the concept of space. The pot as an icon is a starting point, this concept is further expanding to other subjects. My interest in the representation and assumption on objects and ideas under different cultural context is coming from my educational

background and life experience from east to west. I address how my experiences reflect on the thinking and making process by analyzing the system I used to construct the work physically and conceptually. The concept of space (physical space and non-physical space) is discussed in the last section, which reflects my understanding of the interaction of ‘object to object’ and ‘object to the viewer’.

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It is strange when a memory appears in my head. It is not anything specific but more of a feeling. A feeling from a specific time in my life. It is magical how that feeling slowly spreads out to each frame of a second, and each frame of the second links to the other, then whole thing starts to flow.

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I. Memory

It feels familiar and unfamiliar when I have left a place for years, then go back to visit. I hold memories of things I have seen, people I have met, culture I have lived in.

Distance paints a very different picture of that place. My first encounter with clay was at the age of eighteen when I attend school in Jingdezhen. I did not realize it was the

beginning of a long journey at that time. I did not appreciate the beauty of that town until I left there after five years of study. Jingdezhen holds a special place in my mind today.

My decision of further study in ceramic was made under a sincere will of

approaching my research and practice in a completely different environment. During my time in Canada. I have learned a lot about art practice in a western art institution; it reconstructed the way I think. But quite unexpectedly, I began to rethink my own culture - how do things operate and make sense in my culture compared to others - I think about this even more than I did while I was in China.

The word pottery is one of the many that I have an everchanging understanding of. The history of the studio pottery movement in North America is the one that planted a seed in my head. I was attracted to and inspired by many potters’ work in that period. As I dive down deeper into this history, the connection between the studio pottery movement and its influence of Chinese ceramics, changes how I look at my history and ceramic culture; it added a different perspective which I could not have understood without distancing. The internal link of invisible connection among thingssurprises me. It is the moment of realizing things are connected in a way that you could never have seen until a certain point in the journey, that makes the realization meaningful and profound.

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II. Icon

“The form does no more than to signify the idea of the function. In other words, the form has become allegorical.”¹

- Jean Baudrillard The icon of the pot is a recurring element in my work. This symbolic shape of a pot is an icon representing several things: the history of ceramics, the vessel, and human body. To me, it also represents my personal history of connection with ceramics, my journey from an eastern city to a western art institution, and my practice evolving from a focus on utilitarian objects to a focus on iconography.

Objects operate quite differently in our cognition in recent human history; the form may have no physical function, but rather, it operates as a sign (or icon). In a sense that the sign becomes the function: it evokes an imaginary ideal function beyond the physical one. This idea is introduced by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard

as ‘allegorical’ form. He discussed the example of tail fins in cars; the form serves no practical purpose, but evokes idealized fastness.² The concept of allegorical form inspires my sculptural works; In my current practice, I make objects to signifying meanings and create relationships among multiples. The intended functions of individual objects is transcended by the collective of whole groups. Through their interaction and connection, they offer the potential to generate other meanings.³

1 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 2005), 63.

2 This is an example of associations from human experience. it explains how a thing, a form, or certain object becomes part of culture that carries meaning. The meaning however may or may not have to do with the object itself, but this kind of existence becomes a signifier to meanings.

3This is discussed below on section “V. Space”.

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6 The pot becomes a passageway that offers me insight into my culture. I feel connected through personal history and practice. Reference to archetypal pot form may be clear, but it is the shifting of shapes and the moment of transition where I invite the viewer to travel through its time and space. I am not intending to identify a specific shape distinguishable to a certain dynasty or region. The classical forms I use from Chinese ceramic history appears in different dynasties and places, thereby painting a vague association. This idea of generalization is part of my concept of using unspecified objects and forms for representation; it is also the idea of symbol which is inclusive and

reductive. I am invested in the ideas of symbolic existence of the pot in the culture and how it changed through human history. It also reveals how my understanding of it is continually changing. It becomes a lens through which I look for an evolving

understanding of my culture and personal identity. I am moving through different countries and landscapes, much like the pot traverse histories and place.

Coming from a place like Jingdezhen with a long history of pottery making, offered me the chance to observe workers in locations from home workshops where one person works on all parts of a pot, to big factory sites, where each process is handled by a different person. I noticed different relationships between the maker and what they made, compared to the studio pottery movement in North America where everything is done by the same person. Both conditions are influences on my practice. The attention to material, process and objects are linked through my experience. The relationship between the potter and the pot, the pot and the user, and its relationships to the body, influence my role as a maker. When I connect my current making process to my pottery experience, I realize all the forms I made are essentially hollow forms, to a certain extent they are some

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7 sort of vessel with a different external form and associations and orientation. The internal link may be invisible but strongly felt.

What needs other than functional ones they answer, what mental structures are interwoven with – and contradict – their functional structures?’

‘and what cultural, infra-cultural, or transcultural system underpins their directly experienced everydayness. There are the questions we shall be asking here. We shall not, therefore, be concerning ourselves with objects as defined by their functions or purposes, but instead with the processes whereby people relate to them and with the systems of human behavior and relationships result

therefrom” ⁴

As we are experiencing interacting and interpreting the object in a particular way, it not only speaks of the practicality of things but our understanding of how things

behave. A functional object certainly has a logic behind its existence, but they also carry more information behind the appearance, the information strongly associated with our daily experience and behavior. As I became interested in these aspects, they channeled through my practice in my sculpture making. I am investing the interaction of the object I made with my interpretation of each form and their associations. The consequences of objects draw my attention; the visible and invisible links among them, the variability in the process of making, the impact of a finished piece on myself, changes my role as maker and my interaction and decisions.

4 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 2005), 2.

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III. System

My interest in pottery form points to interest in iconography in general, I make iconic objects to address themes and subjects, including but not limited to body, pot, void, passage, nature and culture. One specific form generating strategy I engaged with is based on the concept of imagining how forms moves and change in space. I usually start with one shape; shape, in this case, refers to a two-dimensional outline, this outline can be an iconic shape, an outline of pot or furniture. On the other side, I usually choose a simple geometry. I build from one point toward another with the attempt to transform the shape smoothly, to demonstrate the middle space, the reconciliation between the two.

This middle space becomes imaginary. When I am doing this, there is a blend, a point that the threshold is occurring, usually with a remnant, a history of one and transforming to the other. This is dictated by the geometry that I start with on each end and the distance in which I am trying to negotiate reconciling the forms. If the two are close in shape and scale, the transition will be less dramatic, smoother. Or in the opposite condition, that negotiation and difference are more extreme and dramatic. By doing so, I attempt to examine how two different things or conditions merge and collide; what kind of impact and influence will occur from both ends. It suggests the circumstances that occur when different cultures, opinions, personalities, even human beings and nature meet, we posit questions from our reactions. Do we appreciate the difference when they are referencing and in contrast to each other? Do we see them as a collective and start to read, understand the individual slightly more differently? My attempt in this way of developing form is a representation of our living experience.

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9 Passage is a piece illustrating this idea. It is built from a pot profile and moves towards a small circle. Both ends of this piece are unsealed. After its final firing, it is presented at a ninety-degree rotation from its original position. Having the original

“bottom” facing to the front, exposes the pot profile and the hollow interior of this piece;

as the profile of the pot moving towards the tiny circle on the other side, it reveals a dramatic shrinkage in proportion which appears like the shape of a “funnel” when

viewing it from the side. With its interior space entered the front view; it suggests a sense of amplifying, a passageway, when a viewer look inside; losing the image of the whole form; the interior then become the exterior.

Passage

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10 Under the same strategy, I use software to create the types of forms that I have generated in clay. I determine the two ends, then the computer imagines the rest. I see this idea as a model of a way to think, the model frames the logic of thinking which greatly determines the output. By setting up the distinct ends, forms in between are logical in one way, yet imaginary. The result from the computer is accurate and smooth, mathematical. The fact that generating form from software is missing the touch of the hand, makes the outcome extremely accurate. Distinct to the characteristic of hand building is the variability and degree to which the outcome is negotiable.

The digitally rendered form, in comparison to the hand-built form, reveals how much the involvement of the body and the physical building are responsible for, extra information built into the piece. With the hand followings the form in the building, the choices of the pinch, the wall, and the distance

of elongation, triggers a shifting that starts to happen in the making. As I am moving forward and backward when I build, there is attention to the body. Where I put weight on my feet, where the hips are bending, where the arms are supporting, where the hands are in contact.

These are all real encounters with the form. All the conditions are shifting and changing in the process, and each condition is very present in the process. I interact with the material in a

seamless manner, they respond and react to me. Void / Fill

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IV. No system – (Or breaking the current system?)

“The knowledge is not only physical but also experiential. The way hands are personal, contextual, indescribable. Little can surpass the hands in showing that we know more than we can say. Psychologists and social scientists have studied this inarticulable knowledge extensively, and they have many names for it:

operative, action-centered, enactive, reflection-in-action, know-how. The most common word is a skill.” ⁵

- Malcolm McCullough

When making and thinking settled in a logical condition, it offers a certain amount of clarity. At the same time, in an unconscious level, it rejects “glitches” in the practice. I realize my experience in this material has made me cautious of over planning.

I miss the instinct in the process, when the expectation overcomes the “surprises”, or the

“surprises” identify as incorrect. The whole process then becomes an outcome-driven practice, a system constructed by my preconceived ideas of all the aspects of this material and my preference. Or in other words, the skill set the expectations and to some degree restraints.

If I consider skill as reflection-in-action, is it our nature to respond? I ask myself, what is the way to overcome the limitation, to “unlearn” what I know.⁶ This question informs a different way I am interacting in the studio. I am intentionally hunting down

5 Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft: The practiced Digital Hand, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 3.

6 20^th century art, automatic writing, performance art.

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12 my “habits” or “abandon” a common sense in order to create a new experience with the material. In most cases, my preconceptions affect my activities without me knowing it. I find myself in this place, constantly battling with my preconceptions.

In late 2019, I spent a few months practicing breaking the system. Unlike what I had previously done - setting up a parameter for limited amount of flexibility. I am trying not to see a preconceived “internal” mental plan, only holding attention to the lump of clay in front of me. In this process, most of the thinking happens where my hand meets the clay. Through the actions, I am paying attention to the information received from all the physical contact and the interactions with clay. The surface, volume, humidity, density, and weight are the physical information I received. As I put down a coil, pinch it with my finger, blend it into the form; the action of my hand defines the cavity of that space, the physicality of the coil between my fingers and palm dictate the next move. A form at the current stage will guide my decision for the following construction. I

sometime will start several of them at once, in order to be constantly moving back and forth between each piece to achieve a dynamic where the feedback from one piece will affect my next move in another piece. I find myself in a place of constantly receiving and responding.

While the logic of making shifts, it brings up the question of finish. By saying finish, I mean two things: finish as an end of the making one object, and finish as an end of execution of idea. As much as the making process is changed, it refreshes my

expectations of what ceramics can do and what meaning it can hold. The definition becomes much more open. A glazed ceramic object is considered finished

conventionally. But it can also become a beginning of another process. A finished

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13 ceramic object can become a source material. I made objects in quantities, with variable definitions of finish. Some are in raw, some bisque, some fired without glaze, some are glazed. Each state of the object has a different character. For instance, the material presence of an unglazed cone 6 objects may feel more “closed” than an unglazed cone 04 object. A raw clay piece has a waxy sheen and a sense of fragility compare to any other fired ones. I take all these aspects into account. They become a new source for

composition with my attempt to speak through the characteristics of each of them.

This has resulted in a bunch of small, hand size objects, constructed with a fast pace. There are a few benefits of this. The smaller scale allows me to see the results in a very short amount of time to prevent overthinking, and the fast working pace allows thinking to flow more smoothly when visualizing certain ideas only takes a few hours.

They have a much higher maneuverability which makes negotiation from object to object happens more rapidly and often. All these aspects, collide when they move into, and reside in one space.

Thinking Room

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V. Space

There are two kinds of space I have been researching and negotiating in my work, the physical space, and the nonphysical space.

A nonphysical space appears between different subjects among the objects I made. The list of subjects I am investigating are expanding to body, nature, pot, culture, passage, void. This expanded iconography allows me introduce complexity into the whole group. I am intent to create nonphysical spaces between different subjects while making connections in other aspects – surface, arrangement, position.

By nonphysical space I mean spaces existing in our understanding, feeling, imagination. The nonphysical space can exist between communications, I see the idea of communication as the intention of delivering information, there is space where the information needs to get through, it requires the effort of an action. When this applies to our interpretation of visual art, the idea and intention of the artist lives inside the actions and decisions of physical piece and the spaces they construct become the body of the information that is accessible. The nonphysical space between artist and the viewer, is exist coincidentally with the physical space they walk in. This nonphysical space can be more imaginative; vague representations and concepts leave spaces to allow a viewer’s mind to build connections, new content that generates within each unique mind.

This nonphysical space can be the spaces between different representations of subjects. Natural form in contrast with artificial form, suggest tension and harmony at once. I intend to find a place where difference in appearances can remain connected; the different appearance brings viewer multiple experiences.

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15 Nature artifact consists of three objects; two

branch like pieces and a human size self-standing

“slab” with a hole located slightly above the middle.

The hole on the “slab” has a smaller opening on one side, with a bowl like negative space on the other side, this bowl like existence suggest human activity of carving on a stone. The “slab” is also appearing to be a shape of artifact, a non-nature formed existence.

The two branches represent the plant, a common form we see in the nature. The two branches stand in

front of the “slab”, all three of them covered with a similar semi matte runny glaze, which blend them together when viewing from the front. The glazed surface with dark spots pouring down evoking the patina of things that have been in the natural elements for a long period of time.

The overall physical space the work occupies is another material in a sense that it has been manipulated by division (walls) and defined by the placement of objects. The placement of objects become essential to their physicality and position suggesting, limiting, and permitting different ways we interact or move within the space. It changes our experience when everything sits on an angled floor, for example, like the experience of being on the deck of a boat tilting as it floats in water. Or entering a room with a translucent wall that allows you have a view of what is behind (the invisible). We have to continually negotiate how to move in space and find a location for viewing. A key claim of Merleau-Ponty about our perception is not simply a question of vision, but involves

Nature Artifact

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16 the whole body, ‘I do not see [space] according to its exterior envelope; I live it from the inside; I am immersed in it. After all, the world is all around me, not in front of me.⁷’ The composition of forms, in relation to other objects, colliding with the presence of the qualities of each material, creates a complexity of relationship in the space. This practice is an attempt to persuade a more complex experience through the placement of the objects that suggest action and intention; the alteration of space informs a different circumstance - the variety of subjects that create distance and connections. It is an unfixed, yet to define condition for the viewer, due to receiving and reflecting on firsthand information, through their experience and history.

7 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “eye and mind,” (1961) in Maurice Merleau-Pouty, The Primacy of Perception, (Evanston, 1964), 178.

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17 There is a photo in my phone I took a few years ago. It is a view from a sunny day at the harbor of Lake Ontario, at the time it starts to unfreeze after a long cold winter, I am standing by the lake, staring at the endless horizon line. The snow is still left on the ground and the gentle breeze brushes my face. It is in late March; I know it is the sign of spring.

My work is an accumulation of my desire to share. Analyzing form, build relationships among the objects, and their relationships to the viewer in the space. I attempt to share my experiences and the point of view that accumulated through living in different places and cultures, through my practice and research in iconography,

assumption, representation, through my awareness of the contrast and conflicts between east and west. It is a journey of going into the unknown and sometimes re-examining what I am familiar with. I am accepting the state of knowing what I have learned through my practice, yet constantly realizing I do not know everything - To be vulnerable and keep moving forward, to listen and to be changed by reflecting on the piece is the risk I am taking in this practice; I aimed not to conclude but to move closer.

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“Don’t stop looking”

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Anton Reijnders

Afterward:

During my time at Alfred, I attend a show in MOMA that included an installation by Mark Manders titled Room with Chair and Factory. It is the first time I had seen his work in person. Manders’ sculptures in that space appear as if they were been left behind a moment ago. The human figure and animal form have a raw clay like finish, but are made from painted bronze which challenges the hierarchy, potential and assumption to the material. Menders’ approach to this body of work was an important teacher to my initial thought of sculptural space and the attention to unintended things through the process.

In my third semester at Alfred, I was privileged to work with Anton Reijnders. Through our weekly conversations, we talked about culture, history, human cognition, assumption, representation, association - It changed my view of the potential of this material as a vehicle of expression - a body to hold concept. In the action of arranging and rearranging in space, I am gradually relearning how to be looking, rather than seeing, slowly breaking my current assumption of things. There is urgency behind all these changes. Coming from a country and study in Jingdezhen and a long history of porcelain production, I acknowledging the history of ceramics and discovering the potential of expression. My personal history is the means to find a balance of these two, a ground of both.

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Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. London: Verso, 2005.

McCullough, Malcolm. Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 1996.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Edie, James M. The Primacy of Perception: and Other Essays on

Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History, and Politics. Evanston, Ill:

Northwestern University Press, 1964. Print.

Dennett, Daniel C. From bacteria to Bach and back: the evolution of minds. W.W.

Norton & Company, 2017.

Abram, David. The Spell of The Sensuous. Pantheon Books, 1996.

R. Stilgoe, John. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 1994.

Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Duke University Press, 1993.

Damasio, Antonio. The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures. Vintage, 2018.

Kestenbaum, Stuart. The View from Here. Brynmorgen Press, 2012.

Bohm, David. Thought as a System. Routledge, 1994.

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Artist Statement

The pot as an icon/sign that holds the history it carries, the meaning it contains and the concept it potentially delivers – the influence of the pot is significant in my practice. I use symbolic form to unfold and create meanings. My life and educational experiences have made me aware of the contrast and conflicts between Eastern and Western cultures. Ideas and things are interpreted differently based on human experience and assumptions.

Cultural context impacts what things become symbols and how meaning is held.

The experience of living in different places and cultures energizes my interest in concepts of representation, movement, and distortion. I analyze forms, building representations from the interpretation of things. I orchestrate relationships through the interactions of

‘object to object’ and ‘object to viewer’ in the space. Space is not only a physical

location; it also activates subjects. Distances between different things and objects, during encounter, creates tension, and energy.

Working with clay allows me to build structurally and metaphorically while I negotiate a material that is limited and limitless, strong, and fragile, mass and light, stiff and fluid. It stretches, moves, distorts in all possible ways.

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Technical Statement

Clay Body

CYC Cone 10 Stoneware Revised (Original recipe from Ching-Yuan Chang) Foundry Hill Crème 50lb

Hawthorne Bond 50lb

Kyanite 100M 50lb

Grog 48M 50lb

Grog 35M 25lb

Red Art 50lb

A full batch in Muller Mixer is 275lb dry material, most of dry materials are 50lb per bag. Therefore, this recipe only required to weight half bag of Grog 35M (each bag is 50lb), and half bag of Kyanite 100M (100lb). I usually mix two batches at once, so I don’t need to weight any materials in the second batch.

I fire this clay body in various temperature, the strength at cone 04 is acceptable if the form is not fragile. Cone 1 is pretty good balance in terms of glaze application and strength. I sometime time fore to cone 6 and glaze the piece at cone 04, it still has a certain amount absorption, but it takes a will to get dry.

This clay body has a very low shrinkage at high temperature, about 6.8%

shrinkage when fire to cone 10.

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22 Glazing

Here is an example of my glazing process. I fall in love with runny glaze in my second semester. The movement of glazes in the firing, dramatically shifts the object into something quite dynamic. I usually start with sketching patterns; the pattern may have reference to certain idea. For example, the piece above is a concept of landscape, the form is stretched horizontally representing an idea of landscape, an impression of a world map is turned into a pattern emphasizing this idea. I usually applied a layer of base glaze on top without any color, then followed with a second layer of ceramic oxide wash and the same glaze with colorant. The result usually land in a middle ground of expected and unexpected. There are things I can decide and control, but the results are affected by a lot more variables – form of the piece, thickness of glaze, cooling speed, etc.

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24 3D Modeling and Laser Cutting

"Fusion 360” software is used to build an existed sculpture into a 3D model, then through a plug-in extension software “SliserforFusion360’ breaks the form into 2D layers. Once there two steps are down; the 2D image are cut from a Masonite board by a laser cutting machine. The whole thing then gets assemble into a 3D model that has a very accurate transition of the form.

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The Consequences of Objects