KennedyTing are delighted to support Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the acquisition of Babs Haenen's Shan Shui, 2012 from her exhibition Porcelain Mountains held in the museum to celebrate the artists 75th birthday.
In Chinese culture mountains have provided a source of inspiration for thousands of years. The contemporary work of Dutch ceramicist Babs Haenen, who celebrates her 75th birthday this year, is inspired by Chinese rock formations. Kunstmuseum Den Haag is to show her porcelain mountains in combination with ancient Chinese porcelain.
Haenen makes ceramic sculptures in which colour, line and form interact as in a painting. Her work is built up of patches of differently coloured porcelain, which she cuts and rolls over one another to produce motifs. Each piece is fired several times, causing the glaze to ‘run’. This allows her to manipulate and intensify colour and motif in the manner of an abstract impressionist painter.
Since 2002 Haenen has been making rock sculptures that refer to ancient Chinese landscape drawings and gonghsi. These erratically shaped miniature rocks formed by natural processes have been believed to represent the mystery of nature since the Tang dynasty (618–907). They have also been imitated in wood, jade, porcelain and soapstone. Chinese scholars placed such rocks on their desk, and displayed larger ones in their garden. Ideally, the shape of the rock should reflect the character of the owner.
Babs Haenen’s mountains are also contemplative objects. Careful observation reveals how carefully they are constructed. The abstract forms are still, yet at the same time full of movement, with swirling folds and unfathomable depths that are endlessly intriguing. The visual elements important in a gongshi, such as gradations of colour, texture, pattern, openness and a balance between all these things are also key to Haenen’s work. Titles with Shan Shui (‘mountain’ and ‘water’) refer in a number of works directly to ancient Chinese landscape painting. Landscapes which, from the 17th century onwards, were also depicted on blue and white Chinese porcelain made for export. Haenen has depicted mountains in three dimensions in porcelain figures covered in brown, green and yellow vitreous enamels (sancai, three colours), and also on a small scale in white mountain figures from Dehua. Mountains and rocks almost always have a deeper meaning for Chinese viewers that is related to Taoism, a philosophical and religious movement.