Aspects of Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Sculpture
March 18 – 27, 2004

Yasuo Hayashi/ Yuriko Matsuda / Harumi Nakashima
Goro Suzuki/ Osamu Suzuki

?Useful/Sculpture?
March 28 – April 17, 2004

Shigamasa Higashida / Kosuke Kaneshige / Tsubusa Katoh
Goro Suzuki/ Morihiko Wada

This spring Dai Ichi Gallery examines new directions in Japanese ceramic sculpture with two back-to-back shows exploring a wide range of sculptural expression, from cerebral investigations of surface and form to whimsical iconoclasm. During March 18-27 purely sculptural forms are highlighted. This is followed by an examination of the dynamic tension between traditional useful forms, such as teapots, vases, etc. and contemporary sculptural concerns. Taken together, the two exhibitions are an informative introduction to the multiple themes – formalism, figuration, and appropriation – that animate the work of today’s best Japanese ceramic artists.

Aspects of Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Sculpture focuses on five artists –Yasuo Hayashi, Yuriko Matsuda, Harumi Nakashima, Goro Suzuki, and Osamu Suzuki – for whom formal sculptural concerns are paramount. As a founder of the influential Sodeisha group of avant-garde post-War ceramic artists, Osamu Suzuki is in many ways the “father” of contemporary Japanese ceramic sculpture. His lovely, powerful “Duet” (ca. 1970s) is a dynamic, abstract form that exquisitely balances lyricism with a compellingly tactile clay experience. 

Contemporary artists Yasuo Hayashi and Harumi Nakashima provide an interesting study of contrasting styles. Hayashi crafts exquisite, almost crystalline, geometric illusions, that play with our perceptions of space, form and distance. Nakashima is similarly interested in form and surface, but draws inspiration from nature and organic forms. His bulbous, bubbling surfaces are a metaphor for life and growth. 

Yuriko Matsuda and Goro Suzuki are the humorists of the group. Matsuda sculpts a giant foot, a detail appropriated from traditional Japanese temple guardian figures, and enlivens it with her traditional Kutani techniques of enameling and gilding. Goro Suzuki is represented with a large Oribe charger decorated with scenes of nudes cavorting, engaged in pottery making, and other enterprises. The piece was intentionally broken and reassembled on a wood stand; the violence of its making is a poignant counterpoint to the quotidian concerns of the figures that adorn it.

?Useful/Sculpture? examines the permeable boundary between useful objects and sculpture in contemporary Japanese ceramics. Wada Morihiko’s wall sculpture can be enjoyed as an abstract expressionist painting on clay, or can be disassembled into nine curved dishes of traditional size and shape to be used in a Japanese meal. Goro Suzuki pushes the envelope by making his ostensibly “useful” objects too large in scale to actually be used. His “too large” teapot is less a teapot than an exploration of the meaning of “teapot”. Shigamasa Higashida also plays with scale and meaning. His large wall sculpture in the form of a platter is actually a meditation on landscape, as is a covered box. New to the Gallery is Tsubusa Katoh a prominent and promising sculptor who claws porcelain into dramatic forms evocative of wind and waves, yet retaining usefulness as platters, vases, etc. Also new to the Gallery is Kosuke Kaneshige, a Bizen potter with a long family lineage, and a modernist sensibility. His “Saint’s Garment” flows with the quality of a textile, its wonderful softness exploiting the full plasticity of clay, yet retaining a possible use as a vase. “From the Sea” is a quiet explosion of sharp, angled forms, evocative of the detritus of a shipwreck, cupped in a basket-like container. For Osamu Suzuki and his contemporaries, the artistic and aesthetic leap was in “closing the form”, that is, turning his back on traditional Japanese useful forms in order to explore purely sculptural concerns. Today’s artists, freed from the tyranny of tradition, can choose to be respectful or rebellious, employing the full range of sculptural and pottery idioms to their own artistic purposes.