Ecological Fiction

Takaharu Hori works in white porcelain, taking insects as his motif to create insects that could exist in the imagination.
Monochrome, immaculate insects in white porcelain, made from an aesthetic sense drawn to the inexplicable wonder of insects, and to their structure above all. They are not simply objects in the shape of insects; they express knowledge of an ecological-research kind, built up from the viewpoint of many years of keeping and observing insects.


Fond of living creatures from an early age, Hori owes the foundation of his present work to the environment in which his grandfather lived.
"Growing up in the city, I could meet at close quarters, when I went to my grandfather's family home in the summer holidays, creatures I never normally came across." What stirred the boy's rich sensibility was the difference between city and country, and his encounters there with the mysterious. This curiosity about the unknown has had an immense influence on Hori's work today. The insects he creates appear as forms of an imagined future that do not actually exist.

 Over long years of living with insects and actually keeping them, two points of view became refined in Hori. The first is a view of the ecology of insects; the second, a view of the characteristics each insect possesses. His works, in which these two are joined with his rich imagination, can be called "Ecological Fiction."


Through the three series presented in this exhibition, Fiction, Mimicry and Abstraction, we introduce the philosophy of Hori's work.

In Fiction, imagined insects are given concrete form. For example, the mantis with ring-shaped hollows in its legs is conceived as a being that, in a near-future world where flying prey has declined, has acquired the ability to discharge electricity in order to hunt more efficiently.
It is a series of works of an experimental kind, expressing an ecosystem that does not actually exist but exists in a world of imagination grounded in present-day ecology.

 In Mimicry, insects are shown that, in a world where humans have become extinct, mimic the ceramics and other things people have thrown away. Mindful of the structural characteristics of insects yet made as things that can be used, these works rest on the foundation of his craft.

In Abstraction, the second point of view in particular, that of the characteristics each insect possesses, and Hori's aesthetics find expression. Each of the abstractly rendered works has an insect as its motif. Rebooting-001 gives image to the character of the fast-flying drone beetle; Rebooting-010 expresses the beauty, which touches Hori's aesthetic sense, of the neat fit of a beetle's exoskeleton. Each takes its inspiration from an insect's characteristics and is expressed through Hori's aesthetic eye for structure, resulting in refined works that dispel the negative image of insects.


Insects, white porcelain, imagination, the future, ecology, the beauty of use: many things are multiplied together and given expression in these works. The beauty born of the wonder of insects is told, through Hori's imagination and creativity, as a new "Ecological Fiction."

◼︎Fiction｜ELEC Actuate Mantis

◼︎ Mimicry｜Bowl-mimic Insect

◼︎ Abstraction｜Rebooting-010

Text: Yohei Okamura