Sokyo Gallery is holding “Cinnabar and Ultramarine,” a solo exhibition by Osamu Kojima. Kojima is a ceramics artist active both in Japan and overseas, in countries such as the United States and Taiwan. This solo exhibit, his first in Japan in eleven years, will feature new works as well as a large work over 120cm high that he created in Taiwan.
On this occasion, we hope you will come to see Osamu Kojima’s works.
Using materials such as block-shaped porcelain clay and soil, tiles, and glass, Osamu Kojima has worked toward creating works featuring both dynamic power and fine detail. A glance at his work brings to mind a natural landscape with rough bare rocks and water gushing out from between them. But with respect to his Nostalgia series and other recent works, Kojima says, “I consider them to be artificial things such as the stones used in castle walls and bricks.
Present in Kojima’s works is a lustrous beauty like that which radiates from things created by human civilization as they decay as symbols. Just like accumulated memories, the look of overlapping layers of scarlet-colored tiles combines with the texture and tint of repeatedly fired materials to invite viewers to reminisce about the past. As the title “Nostalgia” suggests, you could call this a contemporary landscape that evokes past memories.
“There is nothing that is eternal in this world and the things created by human beings are always torn and warped in places,” explains Kojima. In pursuit of a beauty solidly existing amid the repetition of impermanence and its pathos, Kojima’s explorations continue onward.
Osamu Kojima
Born in Fukui Prefecture, 1973. He studied ceramics in the Sculpture Course of Kyoto Seika University’s Faculty or Art and has been invited to artist-in-residence programs such as Shiragaki Ceramic Cultural Park, Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (Montana), and Tainan National University of the Arts (Taiwan). Thus far, he has exhibited works at solo exhibitions held both in Japan and abroad in places such as New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum (Taiwan) and Jason Jacques Gallery (New York). He currently produces works in Mie Prefecture, Japan. Main awards include the Bronze medal at the 7th International Ceramics Festival MINO in 2005 (also won in 2014), the Shumei Cultural Foundation’s 17th Shumei Cultural Foundation Prize in 2006, and the Gold Medal at the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale in 2012 (also won the biennale’s Grand Prize in 2016). Major collections include the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts, and New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum.