exhibition design
curators: Franck Gautherot & Seungduk Kim, Consortium Museum, Zhang Yao
This first major exhibition at a museum in China, hosted by UCCA, brings together a selection of pieces from the Accolay pottery collection, juxtaposed with contemporary works by Sylvia Auvray, Nitsa Meletopoulos, Geng Xue, Ou Ming, Sun Xue, Rena Kudoh, Takuro Kuwata and Robert Cuoghi.

The exhibition title “Raw Modernism: Accolay Clay Today” draws on the dual resonance of “raw.” On the one hand, it invokes the material transformation triggered by the kiln in the ceramic firing process—when raw clay is fired into a solid substance, completing the passage from malleable matter to enduring object. On the other hand, “raw” evokes an autodidactic modernism, a mode of artistic production in which the Accolay potters, working outside academic systems, drew imagery and forms from mass media and popular magazines, developing a distinctive visual language through a sustained absorption of novelty, abstract art, and popular culture. Moving fluidly between art, craft, and design and rooted in popular imagery and material experimentation, this practice shaped the “raw modernism” that has come to define Accolay ceramics. Building around this concept, the exhibition juxtaposes two modes of ceramic practice: the Accolay workshop, characterized by anonymously produced everyday, typified objects ranging from vases and lamps to masks, and animal figures; and contemporary ceramic practices by artists from diverse cultural contexts that which extend the boundaries of the medium, probing its possibilities across different materials and forms.

Accolay ceramics emerged during postwar reconstruction in Europe. At the end of World War II, a small group of young Parisians left the city for the village of Accolay, near Vermenton in northern Burgundy, where they established a pottery studio on the banks of the Cure river. Operating a gas station and ceramic production workshop side by side, they developed a model of collective practice that combined living, production, and sales. Their works were completed in the workshop and then sold directly at the gas station, embedding ceramic practice in everyday circulation and the local economic system. The practice is characterized by collective production, all works were uniformly signed “Accolay” to minimize individual authorship, while drawing largely on visual resources such as popular magazines. Under low-cost, efficient conditions, the production embraced its commercial nature with an experimental spirit.