House of Useless

《無用之家》是顏妤庭首次的陶瓷個展，也是他 2019 年於荷蘭歐洲陶藝中心駐村後，將陶瓷材料與過往繪畫脈絡重新連結的一次階段性發表。過去，他多以水墨與膠彩繪畫處理身體、慾望、人際關係與觀看經驗；而在這個展覽中，原本存在於平面作品中的符號，被轉化為一系列帶有居家物件性格的陶瓷作品。

展名中的「無用」，並非指向功能的失敗，而更接近一種對日常物件與身體慾望的重新想像。這些陶瓷物件本是居家用品，但卻又微微走偏，脫離了實用的目的，停留在可用與不可用、物件與雕塑、私密與展示之間，成為家中多餘卻難以割捨的障礙物。

另一方面，它們呈現了顏妤庭 2019 至 2021 年間對陶瓷材料的實驗，包含瓷漿書寫、陶板塑形、鏤空造型、模具製作與 3D 建模等。經由不同技術與材料的探索，他將繪畫中的元素轉化為實體，使其在物件、器皿、家具與雕塑之間移動；平面作品中的身體、慾望與日常場景被帶入現實空間，成為可供觀看、擺放、使用或誤用的物件。

House of Useless is Yu-Ting Yen's first solo exhibition of ceramics. It marks a stage in his practice following his 2019 residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre in the Netherlands, where he began to reconnect ceramic materials with the visual language of his earlier paintings. In the past, Yen's ink and gouache works often explored the body, desire, interpersonal relationships, and the act of looking. In this exhibition, the symbols that once existed in his two-dimensional works are transformed into a series of ceramic pieces with the character of domestic objects.

The "uselessness" in the title does not refer to a failure of function, but rather to a reimagining of everyday objects and bodily desire. These ceramic pieces began as household items, yet each has drifted slightly off course, away from practical purpose, remaining somewhere between usefulness and uselessness, object and sculpture, intimacy and display. They become excessive yet difficult-to-discard obstacles within a home.

They also present Yen's experiments with ceramic materials between 2019 and 2021, including slip writing, ceramic slab forming, openwork forms, mold-making, and 3D modeling. Through these different techniques and material explorations, Yen transforms elements from painting into physical objects, allowing them to move between object, vessel, furniture, and sculpture; bodies, desires, and everyday scenes from the pictorial plane are brought into real space, becoming objects to be viewed, placed, used, or misused.