Exhibition | Fujikasa Satoko, “Form in Motion” at Joan B. Mirviss, New York

The following is a press release from New York’s Joan B. Mirviss gallery. Sculptor Fujikasa Satoko is exhibiting Form in Motion at the gallery from Sept. 10 – Oct. 9. Tough luck if you wanted any of these sculptures, they appear to be sold out.

Above image: Fujikasa Satoko, Seraphim, 2015, stoneware with white slip, 25 x 23 3/8 x 16 inches

Though only in her thirties, Fujikasa Satoko (b. 1980) has received international attention and acclaim for her captivating sculptures that seem to dance off the surfaces on which they stand. These ethereal forms appear gravity-defying, swirling in motion as if fashioned from the lightest fabric caught in a breeze, or as plants growing before one’s eyes, or swirling waters and rolling waves. Greatly influenced by the vitality of nature, Fujikasa explains,

“It is through my intimate dialogue with my medium that I am able to express nature’s fluid energy. Drawing from both the beauty and power of this world and the emotional response that they evoke, I hope to convey nature’s life force in the mind of the viewer.”

Fluid and dynamic, Fujikasa’s sculptures are created from the highly desirable, coarse and pliable clay of Shigaraki. They are all hand built by slowly melding slender coils of clay, requiring months to complete a single work. Due to the extraordinary thinness of the sculptures’ walls, varying from two centimeters to three millimeters, controlling the drying time is the most difficult aspect of her technique. It is because of the time- consuming nature of her creative process that this, the first exhibition of Fujikasa’s oeuvre outside of Japan, will include only a dozen works created over two years.

In 2011, just after one year out of graduate school at the prestigious Tokyo University of the Arts, Fujikasa burst upon the art scene with her prize-winning solo exhibition at the Hagi Uragami Museum. Since then, ten of her major works have entered the collections of prominent museums in Japan,France and the United States,including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Musée Cernuschi in Paris, where they remain on continuous view.

Love contemporary ceramic art? Let us know in the comments.