A pop art invitational in Jingdezhen, the thousand-year porcelain capital of China, staged inside a building shaped like a giant ceramic bowl. Curative curated and assembled the group.
Jingdezhen has made porcelain for more than a thousand years. It is the reason “china” is a word for ceramic. To stage a contemporary pop art invitational there sets two histories against each other on purpose: the oldest craft tradition in the country and the newest, loudest, most collectible visual language on earth.
The building doubles the idea. Childlike Wonder was installed in the Changnanli Art Center, a landmark locals call “The Big Bowl,” a structure shaped like an enormous glazed vessel clad in scale-like tiles. The show did not borrow a white cube. It took over a piece of civic ceramic architecture.
The opportunity came in through one of Curative’s contacts, and Curative took it from invitation to exhibition. This is a curatorial credit, not only a production one. Curative project-managed the show and put the group together, selecting and assembling the artists, then coordinated them into the exhibition and traveled with Louis De Guzman to the opening in Jingdezhen, in partnership with Longmen Art Projects.
It is the “for artists” relationship widened to its fullest: not one artist and one object, but a curated roster landed together, on the other side of the world, under one title.
The artists Curative brought, Louis De Guzman, OG Slick, Persue, and Nychos, each showed a range rather than a single piece: original paintings on canvas, collectible sculptures, and art prints. The breadth let the exhibition read each artist as a full practice, from the one-off canvas to the editioned object, inside a show built around childlike delight, which is what 稚趣 names.
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