A cultural exchange between Japan and Germany is becoming a successful regularity: For the 3rd time, Marianne Heller is presenting an exhibition with 4 Japanese ceramic artists in collaboration with Yufuku Gallery, Tokyo. And again, this show proves decisiveness and aesthetics of contemporary Japanese ceramic art, its innovative capacity and connectivity of traditions at the same time.
Highly awarded Ken Mihara (*1958) – represented in museums in the USA and in Great Britain – is showing asymmetric works of stoneware, playing with the opposition of line and curves and revealing timeless beauty with their stonelike surfaces.
Masaru Nakada (*1977) is paying respects to subtle simplicity with his coloured zylindrical vessels made of porcelain. But it is a kind of deliberate understatement: Their vertically carved and in layers glazed surfaces are results of highly elaborate craft.
Shunichi Yabe (*1968) is descended from a family of potters from Bizen, one of the Six Old Kilns of Japan. Bizen rooted pottery prefers traditional vessels fired in anagama kilns. Although traditional in firing Shunichi Yabe`s forms are far from his roots: His elegant, wood-fired stoneware vessels with sharp edged rims combine tradition with modernity.
Yasuko Sakurai (*1969) is committing herself to slip cast porcelain. Her unique, large and startling forms have aligned holes all over and seem to consist of light an shadow more than of a ceramic material. |