KOSAKU KANECHIKA is pleased to show a solo presentation by Takuro Kuwata for Art Basel Hong Kong 2023.

Takuro Kuwata has captivated audiences with his remarkable originality at solo exhibitions in major cities worldwide, including New York, London, and Brussels. Adorned with vivid colors and metallic glazes, his unforgettable works are distinctive, yet based on traditional Japanese ceramic techniques, such as kairagi (cracking in the glaze that occurs when it shrinks more than the clay body during firing) and ishihaze (protrusions formed when stones in the clay burst during firing). Kuwata’s novel visual language is deeply rooted in ceramic tradition, and yet he retains a critical eye, engaging in a thorough dialogue with the material while pioneering new horizons from a contemporary perspective.

In Kuwata’s creative process, he painstakingly masters and reinterprets ceramic techniques through meticulous investigation. His extensive experimentation that pushes technical boundaries, while at times reversing course and negating previous developments, makes novel encounters possible. Rich with organic forms and a distinct playfulness, evoking molten lava, sun baked mud, and exploding candies, his sculptures are born of a daring vision that is unrestrained by conventional thinking. However, it also incorporates the wabi-sabi aesthetic that has been continuously passed down along with the culture of the tea ceremony from the Azuchi-Momoyama period and the aesthetics of traditional Japanese ceramic art that sees beauty in nature and in that which is imperfect. Using his works as the medium, Kuwata seeks to make his audience aware of this newfound territory. The variety of small, medium, and large-sized sculptures on view conveys the broad range of styles and the sense of evolution present in his practice, from works resembling utilitarian items passed down since ancestral times to towering sculptural monuments.

This presentation also includes the artist’s recent TEE BOWL series of sculptural works, derived from the shape of the traditional tea bowl. The title, which is a wordplay on “tea bowl,” expresses the artist’s desire to elevate ceramics from simple craft to fine art. Like a golfer teeing up a golf ball to lift it off the ground, Kuwata raises ceramics to a new level, subverting conventional thinking. This presentation will introduce thirteen works, including TEE BOWL sculptures, each presented so as to give a sense of the individual creative processes that went into its production. The booth space was designed by Tokyo-based architect Kentaro Ishida.