The Gooey, Grotesque Porcelain Babies of Johnson Tsang

Just look at these wretched babies sculpted by Chinese artist Johnson Tsang, with their plump cheeks and oversized heads, wailing, screaming, laughing, and drooling like babies do. Some of them are cups, others are in cages, but all of them take a surreal look at our perceptions of infants. Tsang warps both the medium of porcelain that has been passed down in China for generations and the faces of these little monsters, making them look more like Mr. Fantastic's obnoxious nephews than the labor-intensive, detail-oriented art he demonstrates in this making-of video.

Last month, the Hong Kong-based artist exhibited this series of warped infants, a collection dubbed Inner Child, at K+ Curatorial Space in Singapore, and we wish we could have seen the faces of visitors checking out the disembodied baby head in the middle of that see-saw, the adorable suit-wearing baby with a fish swimming into its head, and the somber lad or lass who is actually a mug. His work ranges from playful sculptures of people skittering through solid ceramic like water to melancholy depictions of war and suffering. Inner Child's bubbly babyfaces and screeching infants shows the range of joy and pain kids can suffer in their early years—from entrapment to mastery of the world—and which really stay with us through adulthood as well.

Check out more of Inner Child in the images below.

Wash Away, Johnson Tsang, 2015

See more of Johnson Tsang's work on his website.

Related:

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