Expanding Earth: New Works by Yukiya Izumita
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Overview
Exhibition opens Thursday, September 12, 2024.
- Opening Reception with the Artist: September 12, 6 PM to 8 PM.
- All visitors are welcome: Mon.—Sat. 11 AM to 6 PM.
- Private viewing by appointment only.
Photography courtesy of Douglas Dubler 3 and Kanako Yamaguchi.
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Director's Letter
Endless Wave
— Shoko Aono, August 2024
Splashes of white on the cliffs, deep moaning of waves coming and going, and the scent of the tide that seems to seep into the eye. Driftwood washed ashore on the beach hums with the wind which blows as far as the pine forests in the mountains. Noda Village—the northernmost pottery-making region—in the Tohoku locale of the Japanese archipelago lies on the border between Iwate and Aomori prefectures. Izumita stands on the shores of the Pacific Ocean each day, thinking that “our earth is originally like a big work of pottery. To create a never-before-seen landscape with my hands is a trace I can leave behind.”
Growing up in the severe northeast environment, Izumita found a beauty about dried fish exposed to the sea breeze. Rusted boats and cracked earth drew his eye, rather than the bright blue sea that shimmers in the summertime. Where there is life, there is death. Beauty inevitably decays. “I want to find a comfortable point in contradictions and opposites.” Before moving his mind, Izumita hands act, folding a piece of paper to discover the ultimate balance, which he then applies to his ceramics.
The surface of the ceramic is constructed by fitting clay to paper; piling upon one another, these surfaces form a shape. The shape defies gravity and takes the quality of burned newspapers. It is brittle and fragile, yet it stands in perfect balance; a life standing optimistically and stalwart having accumulated layers of the past and present.
Izumita's artworks are dedicated to the essence of earth to which all returns, just as each life exists from moment to moment. His artistry evokes warm nostalgia as the momentary notes of each layer compose a symphony in the tune of nature and all life.
Izumita calls this fifth exhibition in New York a “turning point.” Among his new works, there are a series of reliefs with waves that roll on forever, and unfamiliar forms never before seen that seem to float to the sky. For the first time, Ippodo Gallery will present bronze sculptures of Izumita's works in collaboration with Bronze Craft Foundry, Charlottesville, Virginia. Izumita maintains that “the stronger the inward concentration, the greater the outward expansion.” With time, his works become waves that expand into the unceasing flow of history and space as he wishes, rippling forever.
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Publications
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Works
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Press Release
New York, NY – Ippodo Gallery presents Expanding Earth: New Works by Yukiya Izumita, the leading ceramicist’s return to New York for his fifth solo exhibition in the United States. Over 40 of Izumita’s latest laminate-layered sculptures, flat-folded vases, and tea bowls are on view from September 12 to October 3, 2024. Izumita’s unseen sceneries of earthen formations demonstrate his capacity to push the physical constraints of hand-built ceramic and miraculously defy the laws of gravity withstanding the intensity of the anagama tunnel-kiln fire.
Yukiya Izumita (b. 1966) has established himself as a most innovative ceramicist from his remote kiln in Japan’s north-east Tohoku region. He seamlessly integrates the geographically-specific elements of Iwate Prefecture—namely its harsh northern climate and rural seaside locale—into the black, yellow, and red clay. Izumita hand-carries the coastal clay back to his studio in huge loads and driftwood, too, is an aspect of his craft; his creations are born from what is washed ashore and the sea-soaked salvages lend a rudimentary salt-firing element that appears rustic and ancient encased in rare manganese glaze. Izumita seeks out a language of lightness in his sculptures that expertly disguises the heavy reality of earth. His designs seem to float without concern; the ceramic walls are shaped on paper sheets at calculated angles in perfect balance. The salt-rich clay is combined with Chamotte to emulate the rough-hewn texture and colors of Iwate’s sea-battered cliff faces like a fossil record of the passage of time.Izumita’s expression of rock, geochronology, and the tumultuous landscape is deeply intertwined with the sorts of wares he sculpts. He is not ambivalent towards functionality, and in fact Izumita first trained under potter Gakuho Shimodake in Kokuji-ware, which is long lauded within the mingei movement. Izumita persists in Noda Village despite tsunami and other disasters that test his ceramic practice; he has subsumed these experiences into a sensibility for the delicate and naturalistic. His rhythmical and dynamic sheets of clay folded into looping spirals and stacking layers are like the rolling tides breaking on the shore.
Iwate and its climate are as much a part of Izumita himself as his sculptorly hands. At home amongst the weathered land and seascapes, Izumita remains devoted to authentically representing the realities of Japan’s inhospitable northern coasts. His works are exhibited to wide acclaim across Japan, and now, as he prepares for his fifth solo exhibition with Ippodo Gallery New York, Izumita’s ceramics are held in the permeant collections of world-class collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and Minneapolis Institute of Art. In Japan, Izumita is the recipient of accolades including the Excellence Award at the 20th Biennial Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition in 2009 and the Asahi Ceramic Exhibition Grand Prix in 2000 and 2002.
Ippodo Gallery and Yukiya Izumita welcome a collaboration with Bronze Craft Foundry to cast a limited edition of sculptures from the artist's original ceramic forms, which will also be included in the exhibition.
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