Contemporary ceramics challenges our limitations and breaks through traditional views, promotes cultural examination almost without board without history. It examines our place in time and evaluates our aesthetic standards.  It re-exams and explores ideas that challenge new contexts and concepts in a contemporary language. Its multi-layered and complex emerging aesthetic stimulates and awakens our cultural consciousness, shifting our notion of modernity and aesthetic modernism toward examined physicality that enrich our understanding.
 
Today, contemporary ceramics questions our way of seeing and redefines “ceramics” and its old traditions into a new generation and context. We maybe is departing from our tradition but also retain or reintroduce, the question is our creativity and artistic expression. The new concept of ceramics today is an inspirational, explorative and intellectual effort and interdisciplinary thinking of combinations to portrait in a new modern representation.

​A maternal bond is a complex tie between mother and child.  The bond is one of the strongest life connections in nature. My mother, Cheng Wah Kuo, shaped my artistic life through Western music training and Japanese flower arrangement-Ikebana. When she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and later departed this world in 2003, she had groomed her only son to become an artist. “Mother and Child” series, express the timelessness of maternal love and reveal the universal connection, dialogue and vision of my own relationship with my mother. It is an inspirational, explorative and intellectual effort to portrait in a new modern representation.
 
I have been engaging in a new dialogue and artistic growth of the “Mother and Child” series that reflect my motivation, vision and aspiration.  “Mother and Child” is to re-exam and explore abstract forms that challenge new contexts and concepts in a contemporary language. As I review my accumulated experiences of having Eastern heritage, while continuing learning and growing as a practicing artist in the United States, I realized that no conventional technique or use of material could visually express my relationship with my mother. Techniques come with limitations, such is the nature of our concrete world; consequently, I have learned to grow beyond such limitations and discover materials for my artistic expression that elevate my respect and deeper love for my mother.
 
Every material has adaptability, function, and untapped potential. Leaning on one’s life experience, full of challenges, an artist must remain true to oneself and explore its potential and honesty. In contemporary art, material is the concept, and the maternal love is the expression.  “Mother and Child” is a tangible representation of maternal love as a life’s experience that unifies purpose and adaptability.
 
“Mother and Child” recognizes natural elements in composition and emotion in maternal love. It overturns, modifies and questions our way of seeing and comprehending the visible and invisible connections that symbolizes contemporary and post-modern visual languages. It also exposes the symbolic, philosophical and aesthetic force that extends and reaches beyond the boundaries of artistic expression.
 

A mother’s relationship with her child is a phenomenon we are all familiar with, but how does one convey such a personal bond universally? How does one truly depict a bond that is strengthened by disagreements, joys, failures, and wise counseling? Ray Chen has answered such questions about this conventional understanding by beautiful, unconventional means with this piece from his Mother Series.

When Chen’s mother became diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease he began to reevaluate what he was doing with his art and began observing his relationship with his mother. This active observation influenced unique works of art such as this one. As he began to revisit his past, he was able to accumulate his experiences of having an Eastern heritage while learning and practicing art in the United States. Chen believes that those experiences have helped him become the artist he is today, but realized that no conventional technique or use of material could help express his relationship with his mother.

Many techniques have been taught to artist students with various materials presented by an instructor, but those come with limitations, as is the nature of many regulated things in life. So, Chen yearned to grow beyond such limitations in respect of his mother and began experimenting with porcelain. Expressing such a unique relationship between a mother and her child required Chen to dig deep and discover how to use and shape a material for this expression. 

“Every material has a limitation, but every material has an untapped potential,” states Chen. In contemporary art the material is the concept, and Chen has broke through the material’s limitations by finding it’s potential to accurately represent the maternal relationship between a mother and her child. Since the material is the concept and the concept is maternal love one could make the argument that this literally is maternal love and not just a mere representation of it.

Just as maternal love is, Mother and Child goes beyond the platonic understanding of this relationship through the various, physical aspects of the artwork. It isn’t a portrait conveying an instance of maternal love, nor is it a sculpted statue of his mother as a memorial. Mother and Child is the tangible representation of maternal love through its twists and turns, rough patches, size, and unity of message and pieces.