Three Japanese ceramic artists, under the curation of Takashi Murakami, exhibited earlier this September* at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles with a collection of pieces ranging from full-sized figures to things hand-held: from pots and urns and containers of different sizes to objects and figurines as tall as gallery itself. Kazunori Hamana, Yuji Ueda and Otani Workshop represent a wider, more exotic yet intrinsic part of modern Japanese craft that has developed as a reaction to their respective surrounding landscapes and subconsciously grown from a culture that has been ‘flattening-out’ for the past 20 years.

Objects on display are held within, hung from, or placed on top of found material, drift wood and mounds of bark and earth. These ‘islands’ are more intimate and hint at something else instead of forming barriers between objects and how they’re seen. Otani Workshop’s Sister Bear (2011), sits off to one side like a later day head from Easter Island, flanked by smaller instances of similar objects. A glimpse of a  face that appears over and over again, barely distinguishable from the object itself, dimpled with the faint outline of two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

Hamada’s pottery—painting as much as it is object-making—references the land and the coastline he surfs. Ueda’s works are bulbous, split and cracked, at times mixed in finish and appearing as if on the edge of falling apart. As with Otani Workshop, results are laborious and often the result of failure. But imperfections are part of the process and welcomed as features that add character, becoming ‘characters’ in themselves and strangely anthropomorphic, as if the land is in one sense animated and not simply inert.

Ueda and Otani live and work in the town of Shigaraki, Shiga prefecture close to Kyoto, colouring what they make from the sight of that countryside and it’s rich clay they both appropriate. Hamana lives and surfs in Chiba on the east coast, and makes works with more painterly and abstract gestures. Yet despite how different and unexpected the work is, all three retain a sense of a culture dating back to Japan’s neolithic Jomon period, some 14,000 years ago. For Murakami’s part he’s built up his own sizeable collection of things from that period, alongside new ceramic works. With the help of his own galleries in Tokyo and parent company Kaikai Kiki, he’s actively promoting what he regards as one of the more unique aspects of contemporary Japan: a culture rigorously committed, disciplined, and intrinsic to understanding the past. Not arbitrary or abstract, these pieces represent a tradition, seem in one sense as ‘folk’ art, that is an understated emblem of the current state of things both socially and, dare it be said, politically.

In February of this year, Kaikai Kiki Gallery gathered a mixture of artisans and small independent galleries and over two days held a market of artists working with ceramics, metal and woodwork. Gallery’s eye included nine small galleries from all over the country. Toukyo, Dees’s Hall, Gallery Yamahon, Jikonka, Feel Art Zero, Toki-no-Kumo, Saruyama, Utsuwa-Kaede, Utsuwa-Note, and Murakami’s own Oz Zingaro. All featured a disparate collection of ceramic works that highlighted their own particular eye. Yet in the auspicious surroundings of Kaikai Kiki Gallery, the event also suggested something else. That not only is the role of today’s galleries supportive for artists who live far from the city, they’re also social and communal spaces, with everyday objects that retain a radical nature at their very centre.

This show is only a small part of bigger story, hinting at the wider network that spreads further afield. Its a network connected through personal friendships and relationships, gained through trust and developed through the pottery thats given borrowed, shared and often collected. Two such places that express this are Pragmata Gallery and Shoshi Gyakko. Both near Tokyo Station, with one living above the other, they specialise in their own particular collections. Pragmata Gallery currently has the work of Ueda, and in the past shown pieces by Hamada and Otani Workshop too. Pragmata’s collection constantly revolves, specialising in ceramics though not exclusively, with glass and metal work on display too. Owner Petros Titonakis began the shop as an extension of his own collecting habit and can claim the people he collects as being some of his best friends. He even introduced Murakami, a regular customer, to Hamada several years ago which later led to Hamada being offered an exhibition at Murakami’s Hidari Zingaro in 2014. Shoshi Gyakko, on the other hand, mixes archeology with more recent artefacts: Jomon arrowheads, weathered Shiki (lacquerware) and Silk wrappings feature amongst other fragments of cracked pottery and a library of old books. The spectrum of new and old places no emphasis on historical importance. Something new happily exists alongside something old, and the tiny shop is keen to place little value on mere authenticity. Things that broken still manage to look both purposeful and elegant.

Whereas the antique market in Japan is big, these objects fall into a curious territory, with people slowly coming around to an idea that function and appearance are not necessarily disparate. As Pragmata, Gyakko and Gallery’s eye have shown ‘Ceramic Culture’ in it’s widest sense, fresh and inviting, and almost a modern invention despite having a rich heritage. But this unique and intuitive approach grown from of a rich heritage is more than the result of techniques handed down from generation to generation. As the country has grown, opened borders, modernised and reinvented itself, suffered defeat then sought to readdress a failing economy and reevaluate the role of tradition in a modern society, contemporary ceramics have over the past 20 to 30 years shifted to sideways, at times to the left, so as to stay relevant and be more than a curio from the past. Hamana, for instance, reflects these changing times.

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Between the ’70s and ‘90s, Harajuku was the epicentre of a Japanese ‘Culture’ boom. Hamana worked within this and it’s culture, growing from a tight-knit community of businesses involved in fashion, food, music, and more importantly ideas. As Harajuku carefully steered the country through a period of dramatic economic change, the world came to see it as entirely representative of Japan. As businesses from outside began moving in, Hamana moved out into the countryside taking his work with him and leaving the city behind. Over the years Harajuku has altered irrevocably. Small independent artisans have slowly been replaced by the global brands they inspired. The cities uniqueness and sense of strange quality have slowly been replaced by a ubiquitous creative fervour. Shops such as ‘Bunkaya Zakkaten’ that no longer exists, came to represent the curiosity and very nature of an place most considered the very definition of Japan. That indefinable quality has flattened out, and departed along with the likes of Hamana.

His ceramic pieces represent his shift in ‘quality’, both in terms of lifestyle but also productivity, embedding the process of firing clay with a character all of it’s own making, not as easily copied, improved upon or dominated by others. This ‘Lifestyle of Ceramics’ is very much a question of how someone can be creative every single day and the constant challenges that presents. Hamana, Ueda, and Otani Workshop, along with others, answer that question through their daily commitment, exchanging ‘style’ for a very leftist interpretation of ‘craft’ with a lifestyle to match.

The challenge is not only making a living but more importantly cultivating some apparent form of consistent thought through very personal interpretations of beauty. Along the way they’re developing a structure for the semblance of such thinking to exist in the real world so that objects satisfy not only their own urge and desire but somehow reflect where the work ends up and the lives of those that acquire pieces—custodians more than collectors.

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Murakami’s growing personal collection, while seeding ideas in his own work, noticeably documents the ethnic history and tradition of his own country and the superficial nature it’s now adopted. Following the Second World War, personal wealth was restructured and things made for rituals including the traditional tea ceremony, are now symbolic of the past instead of the measurement of importance and respect they once were. This ‘flattening out’ of culture is something he’s always explored and undoubtedly an inspiration for his own ethos of ‘Superflat’–ness. But as he also points out with the Blum and Poe show, something more is buried deep within the work of contemporary Japanese ceramics. Teppei Ono’s show Light in the Shadow of the Heart at Kaikai Kiki Gallery in 2010 traced the artist working in very depths of own self-built wood-fired kiln in Tokonome, Aichi prefecture and is representative of a medium coming to terms with its place in contemporary world mediated by technology and the urge to work with speed and without thought. The important of pottery, as Ono points out when interviewed at the time of his show, is figuring out what is important ceramics in the first place. going back over the same ideas over and over again, guided by intuition, and materials of thought and time, as much as clay itself.

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Kazunori Hamana, Yuji Ueda, Otani Workshop—Curated by Takashi Murakami
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
September 11 to October 24, 2015

http://www.blumandpoe.com/exhibitions/kazunori-hamana-yuji-ueda-otani-workshop

Gallery’s eye
Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo
February 13 to 15, 2015

http://gallery-eye.com

Teppei Ono Pottery Exhibition— Light in the Shadow of the Heart
Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo
December 3 to 16, 2010

http://en.gallery-kaikaikiki.com/2011/03/ex_teppei_ono/

Pragmata Gallery
http://www.pragmata-gallery.com

Shoshi Gyakko
http://gyakko.blogspot.jp

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December, 2015 (Edit: December 2016)