I got very interested in the parts that connect things together; I wanted to try and give shape to them.
-Kentaro Kawabata
Kentaro Kawabata graduated from Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center in 2000. After that, he earned awards in events such as Mashiko Ceramic Exhibition and Paramita Museum Ceramic Exhibition, and has gained an excellent reputation as a contemporary ceramic artist both in Japan and overseas, presenting his works at contemporary art galleries or art fairs.
Kawabata, who works in the midst of nature in a mountain valley and enjoys growing cacti and succulents as hobbies, likens such connecting parts to the stem of a familiar flowering plant, which connects the root to the flower. If we transpose the analogy to the human body, the connecting part corresponds to the forearm that connects the hand to the elbow or the knee that connects the thigh to the shin.
The exhibition’s title “Knee Bridge,” refers to a bridge posture in which the ends of the body—the head and feet—are attached. This is a term that Kawabata happened on while seeking ways to express the presence of the parts that link one thing to another, like the knee of the human body. Kawabata mentions that this term also resonates with his own creative process, in the sense that he connects the beginning and end of strings of clay and builds them up.
The signals transmitted from the head reach the fingertips through these bridges. Kawabata’s finely detailed works exude organic and captivating visual moods, and their finely detailed sculptural forms highlight his consummate skill in forming clay. His pieces are unique manifestations of the artist’s fingertips that powerfully draw the viewer’s eyes.
Kentaro Kawabata
Born in 1976 in Saitama, Japan, and is currently working in Gifu Prefecture. He graduated from the ceramics department of Tokyo Designer Gakuin in 1998, completed a course at the Tajimi City Pottery Design and Technical Center in 2000. Collections include at Anadolu University (Eskişehir, Turkey), the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art (Mashiko, Tochigi, Japan), the Paramita Museum (Mie, Japan), the Ushida Collection (Tajimi, Gifu, Japan), and the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.). Major exhibitions include Carouge International Ceramic Exhibition (Switzerland, 2003), “The Power of Decoration a Viewpoint on Contemporary Kôgei” (Crafts Gallery, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan, 2009), Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale (South Korea, 2009), “Secret Relationship between Ceramics and Colors” (Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu, Japan, 2010), SOFA Chicago (Chicago, U.S.A., 2010), “Phenomenon of Contemporary Ceramics,” (Ibaraki Ceramic Art Museum, Japan, 2014), and “PUNK: Craft - Salvation of the Soul” (Rakusuitei Museum of Art, Toyama, Japan, 2016). He also curated “±8 - A Group Exhibition of Contemporary Ceramics” (SHOP Taka Ishii Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019). Major awards include the Grand Prize at the Oribe-no-kokoro Ceramic Exhibition (Mino, Japan, 2001), the Kamoda Shoji Award at the Mashiko Ceramic Exhibition (Tochigi, Japan, 2004), and the Grand Prize at the Paramita Museum Ceramic Exhibition (Mie, Japan, 2007).