Shigemasa Higashida

The Lyricism of Landscape
October 5-23, 2004

Shigemasa Higashida will exhibit his contemporary interpretation of Japanese Oribe style ceramics at Dai Ichi Gallery in New York during October. A reception for the artist will be held at the Gallery on October 5, from 5:00 – 7:30 p.m.

Born in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1955, Higashida graduated from Shimonoseki City College. Determined to become a ceramic artist, he entered Gifu Prefectural Tajimi Industrial School, graduating in 1984. The very next year he received an Award in the Asahi Ceramic Competition, a feat he was to repeat in the subsequent five years. He exhibits widely in Japan, including solo shows at Gallery Miyasaka, and Takashimaya, Sogo, and Wako department stores, and in the U.S. at Dai Ichi Gallery, where his exhibitions are invariably sold-out successes. 

For his current show and sale at Dai Ichi, Higashida has provided a stunning selection of his work in Oribe and Shino glazes. His version of Oribe is extraordinarily lush, vibrant and luminous. The greens range from tender spring green to dark hemlock, the blues from Mediterranean turquoise to sky blue, and some works also show a creamy to smoky white that creates a suggestion of clouds or mist. The glazes pool and flow in variegated splendor across his dynamic forms: vases, boxes, large rectangular platters and incense burners. The objects are intended for use, but they can also be read as meditations on 
mountainous landscapes, waterfalls, vernal pools, treks and pilgrimages. In this way, they recall Japanese and Chinese scroll-paintings. A large rectangular platter evokes a volcanic pool: deep, calm, and cool. A dramatic oribe incense burner exhibits the dynamic tension of the upward thrust of the form against the downward flow of the glaze.

Higashida takes the Oribe tradition in a fresh new direction, and to new heights of skill and artistic merit.

Please call or email us for information on current exhibit.