"As long as you want to do something, you will never be late." For Cao Hankai, this sentence is perfect. Because of working hard, I was busy day and night for other people's art work, but I forgot my favorite pottery sculpture for a full 10 years. Later, when he was about to enter middle age, he resolutely decided to give it a go, bravely chose to live for his dreams, and finally devoted most of his time to personal ceramic sculpture creation.

Cao Hankai (Aqiu), a ceramic artist who makes Malaysia proud. Graduated from the Malaysia Institute of Art in 1997, majoring in fine arts - oil painting (Fine Arts). Fifteen years ago (2004), he left his hometown and went to Hong Kong to develop. He has participated in the sculpture engineering and art direction of Hong Kong Disneyland, Singapore Universal Studios, Australia, and Shanghai theme parks. These experiences made him realize that ceramic sculpture is the most suitable medium for him.

Play Toy

Mother & Son

Cao Hankai's works are all true portrayals from the heart. The works are simple rather than colorful, but they can bring out his personal characteristics. Through ceramic sculptures, he expresses his inner emotions and thoughts. This is the closest communication between him and the audience.

It is not difficult to find that in Cao Hankai's works, pottery sculptures of humans and animals account for the majority. He once said in an interview that this stems from his long-term work in the city, seeing that people behave like animals, but he also found similarities with humans in animals. He said, "Some animals are very human, while some humans are very animal." After discovering the subtle relationship between humans and animals, he was inspired to create pottery sculptures, thus presenting a combination of humans and animals - human-animal pottery sculptures.

No war please

For his own works, Cao Hankai usually does not give many explanations or mention the stories behind them, and even hopes that he will not name his ceramic sculptures in the future. That's because he doesn't want to use this to limit the audience's imagination of the work. The value of art is that it allows you to have unconstrained views through a work. Therefore, he hopes that the audience can appreciate his works from their own perspectives and experience the feelings that each work brings to them.

1. Centaur

2. Dog Lady

Now, having been in Hong Kong for many years, after being recognized abroad, he finally returned to Malaysia to hold a personal ceramic exhibition. In addition to ceramic sculptures, bronze sculptures and drawings can also be found in his works.

If you are interested in Cao Hankai's works, you can visit the following website. Raymond Gallery is not only a digital art gallery that collects all kinds of art, but also a platform for art workers to display their works.

Duck Angel: Duck Angel is a work made by Cao Hankai with terra cotta and crystal, completed in 2015. What does this work remind you of?

Kiss: These two ceramic sculptures are not from the same period. On the left is the creation of Cao Hankai's initial contact with ceramic sculpture, which was completed in 2007. On the right is Cao Hankai's work in 2013. The works of different periods unexpectedly showed a super high degree of fit, which made Cao Hankai combine the two into one.

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