LOY Contemporary is delighted to present, for Asia NOW 2024, a solo show by Chinese artist Wang Xiaolin.

Porcelain is an unforgiving material. Unlike with other clays, when working with porcelain, any sloppiness or inattention will be punished. The slightest miscalculation can cause textural changes, deformations, delayed curvatures, or even cracks in the porcelain surface during cooling—a process referred to as “dunting.”

Add color into the mix, and it gets even trickier. Since the paints are exposed to temperatures of up to 1,500°C, and undergo repeated firing rounds, the porcelain painter must exercise expert control over every step of the process to ensure the colors adhere to the base material. If the kiln temperature is too high, the pigment application will be uneven, causing staining or color aberrations; if too low, the clay may not fully vitrify, or the colors may appear dull or muted. Suffice to say, porcelain painting is a fiddly endeavor.
None of this worries Chinese multidisciplinary artist Wang

Xiaolin, who combines traditional painting methods with overglaze techniques to create one-of-a-kind porcelain paintings that interrogate, among other things, the distorted relationship between man and nature, the performative nature of identity in a technology-mediated age, and the value of creativity in a world where productivity is upheld at all costs. Porcelain painting, in Wang’s estimation, “always lingers
on the boundary” of uncertainty. “The uncontrollable factors are its charm.”