The most special porcelain vase in the world

Aracheli Lim's Pixel Art World Using 'Small Ceramic Vases'

Artist Aracheli Lim, with incredible focus and delicacy, steadily produces very small ceramic vases, each standing at approximately 4cm tall, on a daily basis. To date, over 15,000 vases have been born from her fingertips, forming a core element in the construction of her artistic world.

Characteristics of the Small Ceramic Vases:

• Extreme Miniaturization: Unlike typical vases, Lim's creations are remarkably small, roughly the size of a fingertip. This allows each vase to be an individual art piece while simultaneously serving as a single 'pixel' in a grand pixel art creation.
• Precision in Handcrafting: Despite their diminutive size, every vase is meticulously handcrafted by the artist, maintaining a consistent form and delicate surface texture. This imbues them with the value of individual sculptural objects, imbued with the artist's spirit, rather than mass-produced items.
• Individuality within Uniformity: While thousands or tens of thousands of vases come together to form a single artwork, closer inspection reveals subtle variations in the form or surface of each individual vase. This highlights the beauty of handmade items found within repetition and hints at the artist's long and dedicated working process. 

Difficulty of the Work:

Lim's work demands not only artistic inspiration but also immense patience and highly skilled techniques.

• Precise Shaping: Molding ceramic pieces of such small size into a consistent form requires extremely delicate hand skills. The smaller the size, the greater the risk of deformation or cracking during the drying and firing processes, making highly refined expertise essential to minimize these issues.
• Patience in Repetitive Work: Even with daily production, creating over 15,000 vases necessitates an unimaginable amount of repetitive labor and concentration. This can be considered work that transcends physical and mental limits.
• Challenges of Individual Management: Each vase is an independent ceramic piece that undergoes various processes such as drying, bisque firing, and glaze firing. Applying and managing all these processes for thousands or tens of thousands of individual objects presents significant challenges.

Value of the Works Created by Combination:

The pixel art or dot mosaic style works that Lim creates by combining thousands to tens of thousands of these small ceramic vases hold the following values:

• A New Horizon in Visual Art: By blending traditional pottery with contemporary pixel art concepts, she creates a unique visual language. Transforming planar images into three-dimensional ceramic objects offers viewers a fresh and immersive experience.
• Artistic Sublimation of Time and Labor: The process of countless small pieces coming together to complete one vast image is the culmination of the artist's enormous time and effort. This goes beyond mere visual beauty, serving as evidence of the artist's dedication to life and art.
• Harmony of Detail and Whole: Up close, one can appreciate the texture and form of individual ceramic vases, while from a distance, one can marvel at the grand image created by the myriad of dots. This provides diverse viewing experiences depending on the observer's perspective.
• Contemporary Reinterpretation of Craftsmanship: In an era of mass production, tens of thousands of small, hand-crafted ceramic pieces evoke the value of disappearing craftsmanship. Simultaneously, by reinterpreting them into a modern pixel art format, she achieves a harmony between tradition and modernity.
• Message of Communication and Empathy: The nature of the work, where small entities coalesce to create a larger meaning, can convey a positive message about the importance of individuals, the power of collective intelligence, and how small efforts can lead to significant outcomes.

Aracheli Lim's artwork transcends simple ceramics, showcasing a new frontier in contemporary art where time, effort, and creative ideas converge. Her small ceramic vases are not mere dots but the crystallization of a living artistic spirit.