Soka Art is pleased to present the solo exhibition of artist Zhao Meng: Stone of Philosophers, from 6th January to 24th February 2024. This exhibition, curated by Zhao Jiantong, presents the artist's artistic practice of exploring various media in recent years, including more than twenty pieces of ceramic sculpture, painting, and ceramic installation. The works combine contemporary imagery with traditional Chinese flavor, demonstrating innovation and extension in the field of contemporary ceramics.

Internationally active artist Meng Zhao is now a fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, and was the first artist to win the Gold Medal at the Prix d'Art Ceramique in Faenza, Italy. He is actively researching the transmission and development of traditional Chinese culture and art in the 21st century, and was the first Chinese artist whose works have been permanently collected by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and has been honored by the Rietberg Museum of Zurich, Switzerland, the Cincinnati Art Museum, USA, and the Cincinnati Art Museum, USA. Because ceramics is an ancient material with extremely high technical requirements, it is difficult for scholars to get involved. After a long period of research and innovative practice, Zhao Meng has successfully integrated ceramics as an artistic medium into contemporary art, and in October 2019, Harvard University organized a week of Chinese contemporary ceramics, Fire Dream, under the theme of artist Zhao Meng and contemporary ceramics, which included solo exhibitions by the artist, lectures on ceramics, and a monograph on the art of ceramics. Media and material, history and tradition, and how contemporary art interacts with China's millennia-old pottery tradition were jointly explored and researched. It also triggered an international thought-provoking conversation about the conceptual possibilities of the ever-changing ceramic form, and the historical significance of revisiting the era when Chinese ceramics transitioned from a traditional craft to a modern art medium. He is also the first Chinese artist to be honored with this academic achievement.

Zhao Meng explores the development of ceramics in the modern world without abandoning the traditional veins. Zhao Meng's works cannot be copied or mass-produced; each piece possesses a unique soul, which stems from its unique firing process, the difficulty of modeling with both hands, and the long production cycle. The uniqueness of the work must come from the freedom of creation and the freedom of thought, and Professor Eugene Wang of Harvard University states that a long period of continuity does not mean that a thick and honorable historical legacy will necessarily be transformed into sustained inventiveness. In the midst of such creative dilemmas, Zhao Meng has never given up on tapping into the great potential of ancient materials, resulting in works that break free from the boundaries of tradition and are full of classical wisdom.

Zhao Meng has been trying to use ceramics to show the cosmological view of "the unity of heaven and mankind" in Chinese philosophy. The theme of this exhibition, Stone of Philosophers, comes from the silk manuscript "Laozi" unearthed in Mawangdui, which says "The largest square has no corners, The greatest capacity is not manufactured, the greatest music has the faintest notes, the greatest form is without shape."A square has corners, but a large square has no corner; a vessel must have a shape, but the greatest vessel has no form. Just as Zhao Meng has elevated the practice of ceramics beyond the craft field, he has explored the rich possibilities of clay materials.  In his early ceramic works, Zhao Meng was constrained by the shape of the vessel, The concept of how to show water in a higher dimension had been puzzling Zhao Meng until he stood in front of the huge literati stone in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and realized that the literati stone was actually the solidification of the relationship between water and stone in a moment of time. The shape of the field and momentum formed at that time was recorded. Zhao Meng found his thought carrier - Literati stone.

Since the ninth century, the projection of intention onto the literati stone as an aesthetic object has been a classic oriental aesthetic and visual practice in China, mesmerizing the literati. Literati stones are based on well-known natural fictions and try to hide artificiality and artistic processing as much as possible. The pleasure in viewing the stones is extracted primarily from the oscillating perceptual act of regarding the object as a wide range of analogous things other than itself, a process of de-ontologicalization and dematerialization. By the eleventh century, a growing unease began to creep into the conscience of the educated elites. They became painfully aware that the natural appearance of literati stones belied the labor-intensive operation behind the aesthetic appreciation of such objects. The centuries-old aesthetic practice of enjoying literati rocks had congealed into an entrenched cultural practice. Until now the cultural appreciation of literati rocks continues to be premised on the false narrative of their naturalness. Zhao Meng's ceramic practice breaks the natural fiction of the literati stone and thus triggers a reflection on the stagnant development of traditional culture.

He breaks through the boundaries of media while returning to traditional forms, and his works always maintain a sensual, tense and ever-changing state, which is a return to nature. Ceramic artists and nature are equal, they will not try to dominate their own media, once the work is put into the kiln, the part that can be controlled is over, the firing process will determine the final result of the work, this fundamental uncertainty is to fight against the unknown. Ceramic art is an abstract art made up of the combined media of clay, fire, molding and glazing. Instead of pursuing the exquisite flawlessness promoted by traditional ceramics, Zhao Meng transforms ceramics fused with straw and xuan paper into stone, where the natural texture grows out of heaven and earth through the carving of fire. In contrast to the fragility of traditional porcelain, which is detached from nature, Zhao Meng's sculptures are more honest and heavy with life.

Zhao Meng is a scientific artist who skillfully and rigorously utilizes the properties of materials to construct the rock-supplied landscapes in his mind. Whether it is the use of soot ink to create an undulating ink landscape with the appearance of ink, or the moment when driving tension and water together to visualize the flow of the picture, the optical change of clay in the flame, or the oxidization of straw and xuan paper into different forms of ash after burning, it is like a visual feast that has been precisely calculated in the laboratory. He realized that although ceramic material science does not directly belong to the field of visual art dominated by free creativity, it has an indispensable role to play in the twenty-first century in the era of the transformation of Chinese ceramics from a traditional craft to a modern art medium in the sense of its perception of ceramic art. Zhao Meng has opened up the known boundaries of contemporary art through his in-depth research and unique insights into materials. Technology extends individuals’ sense of view, and the technology created by human beings may seem cold, but precisely in the process of combining with culture, it shows the warmest side.

The " Literati Stone" is the quintessential symbol of Chinese culture. Zhao Meng, through his own artistic practice, followed the philosophy of "Taoism follows nature", and interpreted the essence of the spirit of ancient Chinese literati and the philosophy, history and sociology of the East and the West. Adding a diversified and complex modern translation of the ancient literati spirit. The way Zhao Meng describes ceramics with ink is like a wonderful encounter between ancient and contemporary, a dialogue between ancient Oriental philosophy and contemporary art, and a complete integration of humanity and nature.

For Zhao Meng,  literati stones symbolize the epitome of the material world. He utilizes a variety of mediums in his artistic practice. His ink works depict the natural texture of straw and xuan paper in his sculptures, visualizing to the viewer the landscape flowing between the ceramic gullies in his mind. He has jumped out of the cage of personal boundaries, realizing the mood and resonance between human and ecology

It is hard not to think of Zhao’s production process as completing a full cycle, which starts and ends with rice straw. It turns out that rice straw is the real hero of this medium-driven drama. Fire plays its part as a subtractive and destructive agent that demolishes plants and reduces them to ashes to be mixed and buried in clay. It is fitting that the material reunion is the grand finality of the play.