[Online Exhibition] Midsummer Sea and Wind Collection
Ippodo's First Online Exhibition
It is a hot, hot summer.
In most years the cicadas would be in full chorus, but this summer, are they too keeping cool beneath the ground?
They are nowhere to be seen.
How are you all keeping?
Ginza's Chuo-dori, too, feels as hot as the inside of an oven, a heat like none we remember.
On this occasion Ippodo has come up with an unusual plan, a first for us.
For those who do not wish to step outside, whether from home, the office or a summer retreat: while staying indoors,
a virtual exhibition where you can enjoy art and craft just as if you were in the gallery.
As this is a new undertaking, the system and so on are still imperfect, but searching all over Japan (and abroad) for beautiful things,
and working with the artists,
we have gathered works of art and craft in the Ippodo taste.
Keiko Aono, Ginza Ippodo
Midsummer Sea and Wind Collection
Ken Matsubara
On the reefs of a cape where the Kuroshio current swirls, raging waves thunder and throw up spray.
Ken Matsubara has walked the path of a painter with Sanko Inoue as his teacher.
He paints pictures in which the figurative and the abstract are mingled,
and his three-dimensional expression evoking sound, in particular, has long been his own original form of painting.
In the pictures Ken Matsubara paints, a sound beyond sight is born.
He has shown in New York and attracted attention through acquisitions and exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art,
and is more popular in the United States than in Japan.
Marina Bozic
When I went to the graduation exhibition at Tokyo University of the Arts, Bozic's prints on washi were displayed across an entire room.
The color was truly Hiroshige's blue; it was like being in the sea, and felt, too, like an abstract painting of the Edo period.
Shion Tabata / Ruri Takeuchi
In her youth Shion Tabata trained at Tanimatsuya Toda, the Osaka art dealer; she admires the finest antiques and makes work in emulation of them.
Her earnestness and sensibility find expression in many forms: painting, calligraphy, ceramics and waka poetry.
Ruri Takeuchi's porcelain features finely detailed depictions of nature and animals painted on white porcelain.
Hidden within is a design for "ceramics to be looked at," not merely vessels to be used.
Here we have arranged them with Ms. Tabata's work, like carp playing among the waves.
Fujio Kawagishi
Fujio Kawagishi's plants are vivid and beautiful in their fine lines, depicting the atmosphere of Japan as if one were looking at an old botanical album.
Only the essence of what he has seen becomes line from his brush, and life comes to dwell in the flowers and grasses.
Kota Arinaga
As if spinning thread, he draws colored glass out fine, bundles it like twisted yarn, and layers line upon line to cover the surface.
Within the momentary form created by glassblowing he enfolds the "time" that textiles hold.
This is glass that, while longing for that vast span of time, plays lightly with the moment.
Takeshi Imaizumi
As a second-year university student, Takeshi Imaizumi was captivated by the beauty of the Song-dynasty tenmoku and celadon at the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka.
With respect and longing for the work of the ancients, he keeps to the fundamentals while creating, with a contemporary sensibility, ceramics of refined form and beautiful poise.
His cool blue tenmoku brings a fresh breeze to the summer tea room.
Takashi Tomooka
In those flowers, painted not with a brush but with a digital camera on white washi, I felt I saw the Japanese beauty of purity and his absolute aesthetic.
He records in photographs the ecology and character of each plant, and forms that can be seen only in that moment.
Nobuo Nishida
Sharply formed porcelain: vessels shaped in porcelain clay, colored with blue slip and fired without glaze.
After bisque-firing Kyoto porcelain clay, he brushes on gosu and slip pigments, wipes them away, and repeats the process.
They are like abstract paintings, and yet feel like the traditional hakeme pattern.
The quiet, modest appeal of their clean expression and beautiful form captivates many admirers.
Keiko Minoura
Keiko Minoura began calligraphy at the age of three and was called the reincarnation of a sage of calligraphy.
She has splendidly revived the elegant beauty of Heian-period kana, and like Murasaki Shikibu, like Sei Shonagon,
she expresses the supple grace of Japanese women in kana characters on washi.
A single-wing folding screen, set off by the blue of plant dyes, that also suits a tabletop.
Makoto Wakao
A ceramic artist who takes on the making of buncheong celadon in Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture.
The pale blue, thickly layered over a brown clay body, and the soft forms
are like a calm surface of water, gently enfolding the viewer's heart.
Midori Tsukada
Midori Tsukada makes elegant glass that shines like bubbles rising from the depths of the sea and catching the light.
Using the kiln-working techniques known as fusing and slumping, she layers sheet after sheet of colored glass and metal leaf,
fires them in an electric kiln, and cuts and polishes the glass, accomplishing it all alone.
Masahiro Maeda
In his studio in Roppongi, in the heart of Tokyo, Masahiro Maeda creates overglaze-enameled porcelain with geometric patterns like abstract paintings.
On a glazed and fired vessel he applies masking, draws his design, and cuts it out with a knife.
He colors the cut-out pattern with Western overglaze enamels and fires it.
By repeating this as many times as there are colors, he arrives at colorful, modern works like no others.
Hiroshi Goseki
Hiroshi Goseki learned clay and fire as a pupil of Jun Isezaki, Living National Treasure of Bizen ware.
Today he fells trees with a chainsaw in the forests deep in the mountains of Ibaraki, splits them for firewood and fires in an anagama kiln.
He continues to strive for ceramics that will endure for hundreds, even thousands, of years.
Katsuya Ohgita
He fuses glass in molds made of plaster.
The surface is finished with a rough texture, and light gathering inside the glass gives it a distinctive expression,
which changes in many ways with the strength and angle of the light.
Tsuneo Yoshimizu
Tsuneo Yoshimizu is a glass artist active since the late Showa period.
He is also a historical researcher, and excels at a style of "re-creation" and "restoration" from an archaeological perspective.
