Xuchen An

Positive value of water erosion on clay body

An Xuchen is a ceramic artist and sculptor from Jingdezhen, China, known as China’s capital of ceramics. Despite growing up in the heartland of ceramic production, An didn't initially have a strong interest in ceramics. His fascination with history from a young age led him to rediscover ceramics during his undergraduate studies, as he saw it as a material with symbolic meaning and historical significance. Consequently, he began integrating ceramics with history and culture, forming his own unique style. An is graduating from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Ceramics and Glass in 2023.

An’s work combines reflections on modern Chinese social culture and phenomena. He employs a distinctive method of using flowing water to erode clay, resulting in the destruction of the material and creating his unique metaphorical approach.

The artist research about destruction on ceramics

My observations about ceramics are rooted in Chinese culture. As someone who grew up in a city with a developed ceramics industry, I was surrounded by the ups and downs of the ceramics market, and I witnessed the boom and bust of the industry from the 1990s to the millennium. My work contains reflections on China's industrial development, in parallel with its cultural development, charting the decline of the latter in the midst of rapid economic development. I use the destruction and deconstruction of ceramics as a metaphor for this process.

In my series of works, I use the theme of traditional Chinese Taoist gods to refer to the old cliché of Chinese politics and culture, asking the question: when confronted with statues of gods, are people worshipping the god as a vehicle for the statue, or are they worshipping religious wisdom?