Light and Abundance: Gold in Japanese Art

  • Overview
    Exhibition opens Thursday, March 13, 2025

    35 N Moore Street, TriBeCa New York, NY — GRAND OPENING

    Ippodo Gallery invites you to join our inaugural opening of the new downtown flagship gallery in TriBeCa, which comes after 12 years on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

     

    Light and Abundance: Gold in Japanese Art is a group exhibition highlighting the rich use of gold in traditional mediums. Coinciding with Asia Week New York 2025, these unique works by distinguished artists in lacquer, metal, Nihonga painting, and ceramics are contemporary masterpieces showing the class and elegance of gold. 

     

    • Opening Reception at 35 N Moore Street, TriBeCaMarch 13, 5–8 PM
    • Gallery is closed to visitors until February 10. 
    • Private viewing by appointment only.

     

  • Press Release

    New York, NY — Ippodo Gallery is pleased to present its grand opening of our new flagship location in New York’s historic TriBeCa district at 35 N Moore Street, beginning a new chapter in the gallery’s history as a leading bridge to Japanese kogei art since 2008. The inaugural exhibition, Light and Abundance: Gold in Japanese Art, coinciding with Asia Week New York celebrates the immutable beauty of gold featuring a group of fourteen master artists’ latest pieces in lacquer, metal, Nihonga painting, and ceramics from March 13 to April 17, 2025.

     

    The pure material, never to tarnish nor rust, is the object of fascination and admiration for more than a thousand years in Japan. Gold represents divinity, the eternal, and symbolizes spiritual enlightenment since ancient times, serving to cover statues of Buddha, temples like Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto, and the feudal lord Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s famous Gold Tea Room. Under shadows the gold leaf adorned folding byobu screen thrives; “in the darkness, where sunlight never penetrates, gold leaf will pick up a distant glimmer, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow, a faint golden light like the horizon at sunset” (Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows). ‘Zipangu, the Land of Gold’ as Marco Polo named the archipelago more than five-hundred years ago, reminds how the country was once the foremost global producer of gold, which empowered the development of a distinct Japanese visual culture. While modern minimalist and wabisabi philosophies rise, flamboyance remains a quintessential element of Japanese aesthetics. Ippodo Gallery presents fourteen top emerging Japanese artists in contemporary kogei for whom gold persists as a medium of innovation and virtue.

    Rising star lacquer artist Terumasa Ikeda leads the tradition of raden inlay with mother-of-pearl and gold leaf towards the timeless. Each bejeweled box, tea caddy, and incense container is the thinnest Kiso hinoki wood enveloped in layers of brushed lacquer. The final hand-laid gold and mother-of-pearl sparkle with iridescence in patterns evocative of electronics and the extraterrestrial.

     

    Noriyuki Furutani elevates the tea bowl to its most formal form as the works from his kiln singularly focus the tenmoku—perfectly rounded walls of equal height slanted outward, culminating in a sublime shaped lip. Golden glaze, his latest advancement, realizes the beauty of the play between light and ceramic. Hirotomi Maeda crafts by hand meticulous metalworks that incorporate ancient hand-beaten methods for molding sheets of pure gold and silver into forms of exceptional intricacy and function. The precious metals are inlaid with patterns in scintillating Japanese shibuichi alloy of gold, silver, and copper.

     

    Painter Kaori Someya nurtures the deep and rich hues of mineral pigments with the nobility of gold; the rusticity of the powdered earth-based mediums made from precious ore, animal shells, and sumi charcoal set off the subtle details of her gilded figures. The light dances as it strikes the gold, textured washi paper, and voluptuous paints, giving animated life to the woman and kimono; this is her debut showcase at Ippodo Gallery.

  • Works
    • Hirotomi Maeda 金と銀の器 Metal
      Hirotomi Maeda
      金と銀の器
      Metal
    • Jihei Murase Gold Engraved Water Container 金彩彫刻文水指 Lacquer
      Jihei Murase
      Gold Engraved Water Container 金彩彫刻文水指
      Lacquer
    • Yuki Hayama 鹿鳴図香水瓶 Ceramics
      Yuki Hayama
      鹿鳴図香水瓶
      Ceramics
    • Jihei Murase Gold and Silver Tea Caddy 金銀彩中次 Lacquer
      Jihei Murase
      Gold and Silver Tea Caddy 金銀彩中次
      Lacquer
    • Kodai Ujiie 黒釉金彩交白釉中壺, 2025 Ceramic
      Kodai Ujiie
      黒釉金彩交白釉中壺, 2025
      Ceramic
    • Ken Matsubara "Kei" Grand Scenery 景, 2024 Painting
      Ken Matsubara
      "Kei" Grand Scenery 景, 2024
      Painting