The exhibition presents ceramic tea bowls whose creators took part in the last two editions of the “95°C” competition. During the opening, guests will take part in Gong-Fu Cha, a Chinese tea-brewing ceremony. While tasting the beverage, they will listen to the rhythm of traditional Chinese music based on the concept of Anna Krysztofiak, a multi-instrumentalist and enthusiast of Far Eastern culture.
As Amadeusz Kucharzewski, the project’s originator and curator of the Wrocław High Temperatures Festival, writes: “Ninety-five degrees Celsius is the temperature at which black tea is brewed. It is precisely to the tea-drinking ceremony that we owe one of the most classical ceramic forms—the tea bowl. This small vessel, without a handle, is extremely simple in concept, yet over the centuries it has acquired an infinite number of shapes, colors and textures—it has risen to the status of a work of art and is treated very seriously by many artists. The competition addresses the subject of a vessel for drinking tea in order, through this example, to ask about the fate of ‘small ceremonies’ in today’s world and, more broadly, about the relationship between people and art. Are galleries really the right places for art? Is using a work of art every day in a completely ordinary way its humiliation or its apotheosis?”
The organizers of the “95°C” competition are the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, the Association for Supporting Young Artists GRAVITON, and the Student Research Group of the Department of Ceramics at the E. Geppert Academy of Art and Design, “Ceramiczne Koło Naukowe”.
