Kang Qing obtained her BFA from China Academy of Fine Arts in 1989. She has taught in Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, and at Harvard University in 2001. Currently she is Associate Professor of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and Director of Shanghai Artists Association. She has exhibited widely in China including Shanghai Contemporary Art Center, Nanjing Art Institute Art Gallery, National Art Museum, Beijing and “Post-China” solo exhibition at Shanghai Two Cities Gallery. International exhibitions include “Water & Mud” at the Contemporary Art gallery in Kyoto, Asia Contemporary Ceramics Exchange at Taipei Institute of Technology, Hamburg Handicraft 60th Anniversary, Germany, “Dun-huang on porcelain”, Louvre, France, and in Curve at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent.
Plants have always been an inspiration for Kang Qing’s artistic endeavors. The swaying treetop branches and glowing horizon on the other side of the woods are the two most memorable images she sees when she looks out of the window of her studio every day. Plants have the ability to generate landscape both identically and differently viewed through the frames of windows in different seasons. Such landscape, combined with the memory of rambling through the woods, has had an instinctive influence on her choice of plants and time as the two main themes.
She says of her work:
“My way of creating art parallels that of gardeners, who witness plants bud, grow and bloom. I’ve been experiencing the tension between plants and imagery, which causes anxiety that can be both constructive and destructive to the production process.”
