Chinese born artist, Jacky Tsai moved to London in 2006 and has since built an impressive artistic career that spans print, design, fashion, and fine art. Tsai’s striking imagery that fuses the East and the West, aims to bring together these two cultures in a way that both highlights their differences, as well as bridges the gap between them.

Perhaps most well-known for his skull imagery, first seen in Floral Skull created for legendary fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and recreated in 2012 as an exclusive print released by Eyestorm, Tsai has returned to this motif time and time again throughout his practice. The artist uses it to reflect on the irony of this image being a universal symbol of death, and yet also a prevalent image in popular culture including fashion, design, and Pop art. Tsai’s unique representation of the skull has always aimed at highlighting these contrasts - its contemporary popularity versus its traditional symbolism. Through his art, Tsai asks us to take a closer look at the skull, recreating it with images of life including flowers, plants, birds and fish.

“I wanted people to see the beauty in decay while commenting on the proximity of life and death.” As well as exploring our preconceived ideas of life and death, Tsai has used his artworks to break the divide between traditional Chinese craft, and contemporary Western Pop art styles. For Tsai, the juxtaposition between images of Eastern and Western cultures has been central to his work - reflecting his own life experience and challenges of adapting to life in the UK having moved from China as a student. Drawing directly from his personal experience of cultural integration, Tsai creates artworks that bring Eastern and Western cultures face to face through both his choice of subject and medium.

Eyestorm have had the great privilege of working with Jacky Tsai since 2011, releasing several exclusive print editions, which have become increasingly sort after by collectors, with some prints rising significantly in value in just a few short years. We are very excited to be releasing a new limited edition screen-print this week - Jacky Tsai’s Cloisonné Skull.

Originally created as a lacquer carving, Cloisonné Skull was part of a series of skull artworks that focussed on recreating Western pop art with ancient Chinese craftsmanship. In these works, Tsai investigated various traditional techniques and mediums including lacquer carving, silk embroidery, hand-painted porcelain and cloisonné. Tsai has been on a mission to preserve, reinvigorate and promote these unique traditions through his own contemporary Pop art works

Now being released as an exclusive print through Eyestorm, Cloisonné Skull looks specifically at an ancient craft that has remained popular in Chinese ceramics since the 14th Century. Cloisonné was an ancient technique invented by the Egyptians, and perfected in the Byzantine era, and used for decorating metalwork objects by first creating compartments on the object using silver or gold wires, and then inlaying flat colours into them. Originally used for jewellery and small objects, the technique became popular in China also for larger vessels such as bowls and vases. It remains a traditional craft in China today and the cloisonné technique is commonly associated with Chinese ceramics and imagery.

Cloisonné Skull reflects the beautifully rendered patterns and typical Chinese motifs of flowers, goldfish and butterflies seen in traditional Chinese ceramics. The bold, flat colours reference the areas of enamel inlay seen in the cloisonné technique, but also replicate the vibrant immediacy of Western Pop Art. While this image of a single somewhat menacing skull floating against a flat background has been seen in previous Jacky Tsai editions, including Sanctuary Skull Lenticular (2015) and Stained Glass Skull (2013), Tsai once again explores a new way of interpreting this motif in Cloisonné Skull - looking back at an ancient Chinese craft, whilst retaining his own distinctive style and remaining true to the Pop-art aesthetic. As with previous artwork, Cloisonné Skull perfectly captures the core concepts of Tsai’s work - the fusion of the East and West, old and new, beauty and decay.

The new exclusive screenprint Cloisonné Skull is available from $1930.00 and you can see more artwork by Jacky Tsai on his artist page here.