Lu Zhang “The Birth from Tragedy”
Pratt Institute
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The Birth from Tragedy presents Lu’s ceramic sculptures, pottery installation, drawings and photography. Combining the power of acceptance, the rebirth from pain and the recognition of being, Lu autobiographically sculpts the invisible parts of everyday existence into her vision. She believes people cannot avoid tragic experience, which is fate, that they feel existence from pain, gain pleasure and find the truth from suffering. She also believes Wu Wei, which in Taoism, is defined as acting and being naturally. Lu Zhang’s ceramic sculpture contains the rhetorical. She is transforming her social awkwardness and physical fragility through the act of making. Lu Zhang’s expressive renderings of figures allude to sinister psychological narratives. “Self-portrait,” a ceramic figure of a female without reproductive organs and with antlers, has an opened mouth with an unsettling facial expression. “Basketball Amateur” kneels down and hides his face in his hands. He represents a failed basketball player full of regrets. Lu Zhang also uses the symbolic in her work. The ceramic rock and yarn pieces were made during her performance Mother Made. The performance is real time of Lu Zhang cutting the sweater made by her mother. The yarn used in “Broken Knee” supports her legs that are, in reality, missing knee ligaments. Lu Zhang deals with relationship in ceramic project “Keep In Touch.” It contains two sculptures. One sculpture is a man wrapped by clay made yarn. The other ceramic contains two figures, which are a sleeping man in the wall and a naked girl sadly sits beside him. The pottery installation shows Lu Zhang’s practice of being. She starts with the question, “is there anything that exists not affected by region, value or time; not having right or wrong, ugliness or beauty, kindness or cruelty?” The metaphysical act of making nothing drives Lu Zhang to follow the movement of the clay and to follow the circle of the wheel.
Media
Schedule
from November 10, 2014 to November 14, 2014