“Kind of Blue: Japanese Artists Working with Celadon and Beyond”

“Kind of Blue: Japanese Artists Working with Celadon and Beyond”

Dai Ichi Gallery

This event has ended.

Dai Ichi Arts, Ltd. presents Kind of Blue: Artists Working with Celadon and Beyond, a spring exhibition exploring contemporary iterations of celadon practices. This traditional method, invented in China 3,500 years ago to imitate the color of jade, is omnipresent among ceramic sculptures shown in contemporary museums and galleries. Celadon is an exciting start-off point for ceramic artists, who use this technique to express vivid shades and tenors.

Through her unique position in this rich field of artmaking, Director Beatrice Chang has traveled throughout Japan researching, writing about, and cultivating relationships with the artists included in Kind of Blue. While some individuals may be found in Chang’s book Fired with Passion: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics, others like SAKAEGI Masatoshi 栄木正敏 (1944- ) have joined Dai Ichi Arts more recently. Those exhibited include KAWASE Shinobu 川瀬忍 (1950-), SUZUKI Sansei 鈴木三成 (1936- ), KINO Satoshi 木野智史 (1987-), FUKAMI Sueharu 深見陶治 (1947- ), SUHAMA Tomoko 須浜智子 (1961- ), and KATO Tsubusa 加藤委 (1962- ), whose work testifies to why celadon is a must for museum collections and contemporary practitioners.

Kind of Blue demonstrates how celadon has become a vehicle for explorations of form, technique, and color. SAKAEGI Masatoshi connects surreal drips of porcelain with nature’s purification of water, as his bluish forms seep out of angular stone structures. Shinto shrines also inspire this artist, who reinvents them as contemporary experiences rather than relics of a spiritual past. SUHAMA Tomoko’s hollow ceramic spheres investigate the potential of the coil technique and barium glaze. Different contraction properties between a celadon slip and what lies beneath result in subtle cracks in KAWASE Shinobu’s sculptures, revealing the different faces of imperfection and control with aplomb. KAWASE is renowned for distilling natural forms into minimal expressions, seen in Incense Burner (2008). This lotus bud is about to bloom, resting on a serene celadon platform and creating a tranquil effect. Japan’s ceramic artists master tradition to form contemporary realities.

This exhibition also presents artists who use ceramic techniques to push the boundaries between different disciplines and traditions. SUZUKI Osamu 鈴木治 (1926-2001), a founding member of the iconic Sodeisha Group, was one of the earliest proponents of ceramic sculpture crossing over from functional objects into purely artistic expressions. His platter Boat was created in the late 1970s, the height of SUZUKI’s career. Five abstract boats float among dancing waves, which spill off the plate with SUZUKI’s pinched and uneven edges. YONEHARA Shinji (1961- ) is Dai Ichi’s first glass artist, who expands this creative realm by applying ceramic techniques to glass. ICHIKAWA Toru (1974- ) is a renegade from the historic region of Bizen, one of Japan’s six ancient kilns. This artist takes daring leaps from the esoteric traditions he took so long to master. Ichikawa’s work is a testament to how widely-accepted techniques can be fertile territory for creative revolutions. Like the feeling of blue, celadon takes on multivalent meanings for the beholders of these objects.

Media

• Sculpture
• Ceramics

ADVERTISE ON NYAB