Horse &jar Installation

A Preface to Changhyun Jeon's Ceramics - An Art of Peace and Rest Ceramics is an art that contains a message of peace. To understand this, let us begin by asking what ceramic art is; and, of course, there may be a number of different answers to this question. The artist or the viewer may respond in an abstract fashion answering to the command of an inner mental image; or one may think of a more semantic definition that looks directly to the objective form and elementary characteristics attached to the word 'ceramics.' There remains, however, one undeniable fact: that ceramics is an art of earth and fire. In other words, the process of ceramic-making inevitably involves handling earth and fire; it is a process of making shapes out of earth to bake them in fire. Earth as a key component of our environment, is necessary to life. Fire, on the other hand, has often symbolized fury, violence, anger and war. Ceramics is thus an art that shapes the life in the earth and controls the fury of the fire. If the potter fails to control the fire, life will extinguish in a second; he has kept a complete control of the fire by keeping locked in the kiln. And in this process of controlling anger and violence, we see ceramics' essential nature of peace and serenity. As mentioned earlier, there can be no ceramics without earth and fire. A potter is someone that plays with earth and fire. Playing with earth and fire, however, is a characterically childish activity through which children come to form a perception of the world. This will seem evident when we look back on our own childhood; we have all played around with earth and fire in some period of our childhood. Even without the help of Gaston Bachelard who demonstrated the imaginative capacitated of the four basic elements, we experienced the world in its elements and its original form by playing with earth and watching a fire burning. Ceramics, then, is an evolved form of the pure and innocent children's play untainted by any distortion. Imbibed with the innocent playfulness of children, there can be no room for strife or conflict. This is one more reason why I affirm that ceramics carries a message of peace, and Jeon is a highly intelligent artist who intuitively understands this. Ceramics is a work of art that has a message of peace. To fully explain this, I want to ask you a question. "What is ceramics?" There is bound to be many different answers to this question.