The exhibition ends grandly with War and Pieces, an eleven-metre-long installation offering a contemporary take on the opulent table centrepieces once favoured by European aristocracy in the 17th and 18th centuries.
At the heart of this chaotic battlefield of shards stands a dramatic and inevitable centrepiece – the ultimate act of war: a nuclear mushroom cloud composed of countless fragments of white porcelain. The cloud is formed from ghostly cherubs, skulls, and decapitated or distorted porcelain dolls – or “Hummels gone wrong,” as De Vries calls them. Christ on the cross and Guan Yin, the Chinese goddess of compassion whose name means “One who hears the world’s cries,” witness the death and destruction; atop the cloud, an angel weeps.
In stark contrast to the whiteness of the porcelain, other figures have mutated into cyborgs, adorned with brightly coloured bionic limbs and heads fashioned from fragments of plastic toys. De Vries refers to these plastic additions as “modern invaders.” He notes: “The ever-increasing ubiquity of non-biodegradable plastic, supposedly indestructible, brings the installation into our own, more toxic age.”
The work has already received significant international acclaim and powerfully captures both the fragility and resilience of ceramics. Since 2012, War and Pieces has toured across Europe, Asia and the United States, with De Vries subtly adapting the installation to each location.