special exhibition

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The work of Japanese ceramist Shigekazu Nagae (*1953) is incredibly pure, with the way his works seem almost to dematerialise porcelain. Today he is quite rightly considered one of the leading avant-garde exponents in this very specialised field of material. Although he was born in Seto, one of the venerable Six Old Kilns, the works of this wizard of white gold have nothing in common with the stoneware vessels that look back on thousands of years of tradition in his home town, or indeed with the production of blue-and-white porcelain that has been located there since the early 19th century, owing to the fact that he is a devotee of an entirely abstract aesthetic which has left the core ceramic theme of the vessel far behind it.

The ceramic star assembles wafer thin slipcast porcelain slabs to form structures that mock all the limitations of ceramic technique, as if they were not hard, brittle ceramic made rigid by heat but instead layers of finest white paper, blown and stretched by the wind. This enchanting effect is due equally to the highest degree of technical calculation and the internal dynamic of the firing process: indeed the elements in these demanding sculptures are held together only by layers of white glaze melted in the fire, and these equally beautiful and dynamic forms only acquire their final form through controlled distortion in the high-temperature firing. The results of such innovations, which have been developed over many years, speak for themselves: weightless beauty and pure elegance. It is no wonder then that museums around the world such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art or the National Gallery of Australia have shown their appreciation of Shigekazu Nagae's art by making purchases. From 1 October – 26 November 2017, visitors can experience the enchantment of Nagae's art in Heidelberg – an exhibition in cooperation with the YUFUKU Gallery in Tokyo.

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