meet asian art: Fragments. On the Incomplete in East Asian Art

The torso of the bronze Buddha from Thailand, the cap of a wheel hub from ancient China, a stoneware “waster” (a piece of ceramic gone wrong during firing) from Korea, and the spacer of a Japanese sword—at first glance these seem to be completely different objects. What unites them: they are all incomplete parts or fragments that have been robbed of their original function and form.

Yet they are all found in the museum’s collection that has been amassed over a period of more than one hundred years. The exhibition presents thes e rarely shown objects from the Museum Angewandte Kunst Asian collection and is conceived to inspire a rethinking of notions of completeness, perfection, aesthetic added value, and origin.