CORE KOREA
Andersen Hall
Nami Island/ROK
2013

CORE COREA, 2013 | porcelain, refractory earthenware, oxides, objet trouvé | cm 217 x 530 x 65

detail from | red sunset, 2013 | porcelain, oxides | cm 29 x 28 x 1,5

fuck, 2013 | refractory earthenware, oxides | cm 37 x 37

lone mother, 2013 | refractory earthenware (objet trouvé) | cm 11,5 x 10,5 x 16

detail from | hard times, 2013 | refractory earthenware, oxides | cm 29 x 28 x 1,5

detail from | hexagonal sisters, 2013 | refractory earthenware, porcelain, oxides | cm 19,5 x 22 x 3,5

detail from | full moon, 2013 | refractory earthenware, oxides | cm 23,5 x 21 x 0,5

Text extracted from:
Ceramics according to Nero, i.e. going back to collective imagination
Irene Biolchini

Destroying the collective memory is an issue also in other two works made during Nero’s Korean residency (Smog Addicted e CORE KOREA) in which it is represented as destroying materials.
In the first work marble is ruined through scraping off (which warns against some polishing techniques that work by rubbing used to clean classic monuments) in the other work materials are damaged by means of a technical process. In CORE KOREA the clay bodies are coated with slip which caused them to craze and crackle.
Western techniques add to the eastern tradition and transform it. Similarly collective memory of traditional pattern are blended with western icons (the cat of Tom and Jerry cartoons for instance, that appears in the black and white tiles) and with modern buildings in the hills’ outline. Modernity is embodied by mass consumption, cartoon icons, smog, the building industry that breaks into tradition changing that for good (see the ready made tea pots at the foot of the showcase).

Text extracted from:
Materials and non-materials
Elena Magini

Also in CORE KOREA Nero merges together Korean cultural elements and contemporary mass consumption issues that belong to the artist. The project starts from an experience that Nero directed at the Word Ceramic Biennale International Ceramic Workshop: the first step was taking some ceramic objects from small dumps, the second step was researching about materials and techniques trying to combine two peculiar features that generally do not come together. From an iconographic point of view, Nero sets an actual crasis of mismatched images; his ceramic works reveal the dichotomy of symbolic elements that come from a culturally distant society and the artist’s rooted imagination whose modes of display are not directly identifiable. Nero looks for a synthesis of materials and views that have different origins and creates a new visual lexicon in which the matter of traditional sculpture collides with decorations made of defiant language and graphic elements, sort of comic or advertising grafts. In these works, as usual, Nero is interested in exploring cultural, economic, social dynamics of the context where he works in and then he brings in the foreground wedge issues.
In CORE KOREA, as in all his works alike, the choice of ceramics states Nero’s special interest both for that kind of materials and for his consolidated usage of challenging ceramics’ rules in order to boost expressive and linguistic topics.