Lee Taxoo
"Re-born" Collection
Lee Taxoo is a ceramic artist specializing in visual art installations utilizing porcelain as an expressive medium outside everyday wares. The Reborn collection is part of Lee Taxoo's larger installation featuring ancient Ming and Qing dynasty QingHua shards from Jingdezhen, China, which were neglected and thrown away near abandoned pottery sites and fusing onto them his wheel-thrown porcelain to recreate a whole new piece. When Lee Taxoo first saw a pile of ancient pottery saggar shards, he experienced a kind of culture shock that led him to intuitively learn the meaning of continuity. These pieces formed a massive mountain after being discarded a thousand years ago; some still had white porcelain pieces attached.
"Extremely small pottery shards, no matter how old they are, cannot be cultural assets. I believe the dichotomy between value and collectible is short-lived, which recognizes broken pottery not as heritage but as abandoned pieces. Modern consumerism may consider this as 'recycling,' but what I mean by 'REBORN' is closer to 'incarnation.' Shards thrown away by others may be trivial, but I think these are prerequisites for a starting point rather than the end of life. Based on the form of the infinity circle, my work consistently communicates that one is nothing but the whole. I believe that "one that remains can replace nine that were lost" through this work." - Lee Taxoo
