Osamu Kojima
Japanese artist and ceramicist Osamu Kojima will be presenting his works at the Jason Jacques Gallery, New York from September 12. The show coincides with Asia Week, also being held in New York.
Kojima is known for his masterful use of clay, glass, and glaze to deliberately blur the boundaries between the organic and the manmade. “Kojima’s work ranges from slabbed and stacked ceramic works to small, jagged, natural forms that have the silent nobility of rock left to accrue the signs of age. Through running fissures and eddies of glaze, the false fixity of stone gives way to the beauty of transience,” describes the gallery.
For nearly two decades, Kojima has been working with clay as well as pigments, glazes, and glass to underscore its material properties. The artist’s studio is close to Iga and Shigaraki, which have been homes to important ceramic communities throughout history. “My most recent work consists of a contemporary landscape that evokes memories of the past,” explains the artist. “Used stones are an image that I use as a symbol of technology created by civilizations throughout time.”
“Kojima’s sculptures are inspired both by natural scenery and products of the human hand, the indexes of civilization which one may imagine being subsumed by nature. His works highlight the ceramic medium’s ability to evoke its origin in both nature and artifice, speaking to the inescapable essence of any object as trace of the act of its own making. As the glass and glaze crackles and drips, each piece takes on the translucence of water and the reticence of a layered lava-flow,” describes the gallery. “Ancient in appearance, his work seems to have been hewn by the earth itself. It is focused figuratively and literally on organic mechanisms of development, so that the finished work emerges rather than being made. A form emerges with glass pools like water, and colors permeate the roughly-hewn surface of the clay.”
Gallery principal Jason Jacques was struck by Kojima’s treatment of material, and called it something “truly sublime.” “Kojima has the ability to change how we think of clay and glazes. At first, you see stone— and then the human element shines through, and you see the sculptural form placed within its surroundings as both a part of the environment and a trace of the natural world,” says Jacques.
Kojima has taught and shown work internationally and developed a repertoire of lectures and exhibitions, including St. Luca’s School in Ghent, Belgium, Galerie Pierre in Taiwan, International Academy of Ceramics in Ireland, and Inax Galleria Ceramica in Tokyo.
The exhibition will be on view from September 12 to October 27, 2018 at Jason Jacques Gallery, 29 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021
