The year 2004 marked a special moment in China's long history of porcelain production. Up until then, the kiln fire ovens of Jingdezhen, the country's prestigious ceramic capital in Jiangxi Province, had been burning for more than 1000 years without interruption. The craft of making Chinese porcelain, regarded the best in the world, was being passed on from generation to generation. In May 2004, four Chinese arrived at the European Ceramic Work Centre in the Netherlands, as visiting artists of its Dutch-Chinese Ceramic Project.

The centre has won worldwide recognition as an advanced workshop of highest artistic and academic levels in the modern ceramic circle. The Chinese ceramic artists took a three-month residency there, living and working with artists from across the world.

Their experience was quite unlike that of their ancestors, who traded exquisite porcelain plates with the Western world on the Silk Road and by sea for centuries.

The Netherlands ceramic sojourn has established a profound cultural and artistic exchange between China, known as the motherland of porcelain, and the world's contemporary centre of ceramic arts.

Dozens of works by the four Chinese artists completed during their stay at the centre are now on display at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Gallery at Beijing's Wangfujing Street. The debut show was held at the Municipal Museum in Hertogenbosch, the city where the workshop is located, in last December.

Sponsored by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Beijing, the exhibition is running until October 1.

Audiences will find the ceramic display different from many others, devoid of conventional vases, bowls and plates with grace patterns and delicate glaze. The exhibits are rather brave experiments blending varieties of artistic languages and materials, such as sculpture, action art and installation.

The artists have crossed the boundary of ceramic arts and now offer fresh possibilities to this historical art, which were inspired by continuous challenges from working in an unfamiliar environment and with people of different cultural backgrounds.

Wan Liya from Qingdao of East China's Shandong Province applied the traditional way of pottery making. His creations reflect the relationship between material and spirit pursuits.

One of his works, "Food Comes First," is a joint co-operation with Adriaan Rees, a Dutch artist and also Wan's supervisor at the workshop. Sets of Western plates are set on a large table, and in every plate is a ceramic brain. A video on the wall shows how they cooked, surrounded the brains with boiled vegetables and soup, and ate with other artists in the centre's kitchen.

Wu Shixiong, chairman of Shenzhen Art Seminar in Guangdong Province, was inspired by the Dutch style of openness and created the "Human Nature" figurative series in the sculptural language. His productions explore the multiple faces of the human body and mind, beautiful or fragile.

Xia Dewu, a professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, hurt his hands on his visit. Because it was inconvenient to produce complicated shapes, he joined small pottery pieces to complete the works, an action which turned into a unique artistic experiment.

Wang Haichen from Shanghai is the only woman artist among the four. She is experienced in the blue and white porcelain, or the famous qinghua. However, influenced by the exotic atmosphere, she boldly tried various new techniques and materials, such as colored glazes and mixed colored clays, to create large shapes.

Also being presented are individual works by Adriaan Rees. A visual artist, Rees travels frequently in China and has built an extensive network connecting artists from both countries. He helped select the four artists out of all the candidates after the centre implemented the China project.

"They are talented," he said. "Not because these artists have received a traditional and professional education. They also embody an open mind to the development of ceramic arts in the world. They have travelled a lot abroad, which enables them to create works representing both their national identity and contacts with the world."

His collaboration productions with the four Chinese artists deserve special attention. With an idea derived from the "Far away Country," which was put forward by Koos de Jong, director of the workshop, each of the artists chose a subject and made a basic shape. The other four then took turns to finish the works.

Norman Trapman, board member of the workshop, also brings his creations based upon his numerous trips to China's ceramic centers since 1989, including Jingdezhen, Dehua of Fujian Province and Chaozhou of Guangdong.

The workshop offers a stage where participants and staff study the artistic and technical features of ceramics, and carry out experiments. Every year, 44 ceramists, fine artists, designers and architects join the workshop and are selected through a global public competition.

(China Daily September 21, 2006)