The moment I encounter a law is when I am happiest. ------ Toru Kurokawa
Toru Kurokawa’s works, which express physically abstract beauty, are composed of strings. Their surfaces are layered upwards from the bottom surface. The surfaces push against each other so that inside becomes outside and dimensions and spaces shift back and forth. His commitment to using strings to make things comes from string theory, which holds that “the particles from which all things come from are made of infinitesimally small strings.” Another source of Kurokawa’s works is the topological theorems seen in the Möbius strip, the Klein bottle and the Poincaré conjecture.
By continually asking himself, “What does it mean to make forms?” Kurokawa uses his instinctive sense and reason to express an original mathematical world like that of the geometrical shapes seen in outer space and the natural world. Since 2008, rather than using black ceramic, he create works using a “silver-black ceramic” that crystallizes coal by firing it at high temperatures in order to give his forms a more distinct appearance. “Silver-black ceramic” takes on many different expression according to what the light is like at a given time or naturally occurring changes.
Starting in 2018, Kurokawa has taken on what is for him the new material of metal and created a work made of two intertwined loops, entitled “Oxymoron.” This show uses a new concept that approaches ceramics works by interacting with metal to overlap and extend loops. While creating with clay must contend with the serious constraint of gravity, Kurokawa says he wishes to express the softness and approachability only found in clay.
Kurokawa’s task is that of taking the primitive dimension of creation that ceramic pieces like these have and then using a “mathematical” thought process that incorporates the properties of ceramic materials and works and yet bases those properties upon ceramics to convert them into a visual design. In just the same way as that results in the geometrically continuous and repeating spatial structures of Kurokawa’s works and the smoothness of the forms that cohabit together there, Kurokawa seeks his self-expression as an artist through the interaction occurring between himself and “ceramics” in the process of creation.
------ Tomohiro Daicho, Researcher, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
Toru Kurokawa
Born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1984. He graduated from the Plastic Arts Course of the Fine Arts Major at Tsukuba University’s School of Art & Design. In 2009, he earned his Master’s Degree in Industrial Art with a concentration in Ceramics from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Kyoto City University of Art. Since then, he has energetically participated in artist-in-residence programs and workshops in Japan and abroad. These include the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki (2012); New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan (2013); Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan (2014); a workshop at the Dahab International Ceramics Symposium, Cairo, Egypt (2015); a workshop at the Baykal International Ceramics Symposium, Irkutsk, Russia (2015); a workshop at the Sfax International Ceramics Workshop, Tunisia (2016); and a workshop at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China (2017). During 2018-19, he was chosen as the Kyoto representative for the Kyoto-Paris Kyoto art market development program, Savoir- Faire des Takumi, and studied with a Parisian metal artist. In 2007, he received awards at the Kobe Biennale (Semi-grand Prize) and the Chozasho Contemporary Ceramic Art Biennale (Choza Grand Prize). In 2017, he was awarded the Special Judge’s Award at the 11th International Ceramics Competition Mino ’17. In 2018, he was selected as a finalist at the Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale (GICB). In 2019, he has been selected to exhibit his work in a group exhibition at the Mashiko Museum. His major collections include the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki; New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan; the Museum of Modern Art, Japan House, Argentina; the Epoch Art Museum, Wenzhou, China; the Ministry of Culture of Egypt, Egypt; the Ministry of Culture of Tunisia, Tunisia; and the Ritz-Carlton, Kyoto, Japan. We hope that you will introduce this exhibition in your company or publication. Please contact us at the information below about lending of photographs for publication or for any other inquiries.