Koichiro Isezaki: Clay in Flow
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Overview
Exhibition opens Thursday, September 11, 2025
Ippodo Gallery presents the second New York solo exhibition by ceramicist Koichiro Isezaki. Koichiro Isezaki: Clay in Flow features 50 of the Bizen artist’s sculptures—including his iconic Yō (‘conception’) series—chawan (tea bowls), mizusashi (water jars), and hanaire (flower vases) from September 11 to October 11, 2025.
Hailing from generations of Bizen artists who preserved stores of the precious regional Okayama clay, Isezaki creates work that flows along the currents of tradition with a contemporary language entirely his own.
Following his debut New York exhibition during the pandemic, the artist will finally travel from Japan to celebrate the long-awaited opening reception.
- Opening Reception at 35 N Moore Street, TriBeCa: September 11, 5–8 PM
- Private viewing by appointment only.
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Press Release
New York, NY — Ippodo Gallery presents the second New York solo exhibition by ceramicist Koichiro Isezaki. Koichiro Isezaki: Clay in Flow features 50 of the Bizen artist’s sculptures—including his iconic Yō (‘conception’) series—chawan (tea bowls), mizusashi (water jars), and hanaire (flower vases) from September 11 to October 11, 2025. Hailing from generations of Bizen artists who preserved stores of the precious regional Okayama clay, Isezaki creates work that flows along the currents of tradition with a contemporary language entirely his own. Following his debut New York exhibition during the pandemic, the artist will finally travel from Japan to celebrate the long-awaited opening reception.
Koichiro Isezaki (b. 1974) contemplates the origins of tsuchi (‘earth’) as the distinctly wet, fine, and nebarike (‘viscous’) clay comes into his hands. Bizen-yaki, one of Japan’s Six Ancient Kilns, is cultivated by centuries of masters, among them the artist’s grandfather Yozan—a leading 20th century sculptor—and his father Jun, the current Living National Treasure. Though Bizen styles vary, all ceramics from the region are fired in the anagamatunnel-kiln for 10-day periods, which is fed with cut logs every quarter hour to maintain an intense fire. Koichiro Isezaki’s perspective is an accumulation of history left behind in the clay by his forebearers. He cares deeply for the local history of the earth and its unique properties therein.
Isezaki begins a new creation by pulverizing blocks of hardened clay from the family cache, which he then reconstitutes as mud blocks. Once he pugs the clay to refine its impurities, he takes the shape produced by the machine as his starting point to slump, shape, or otherwise manipulate. Isezaki has established signature and distinct forms: he throws the damon and pulse vases against ridged stone to cast shapes in the surface of the clay. He molds tea bowls by hand and then cuts them with wire to create sharp, bold faces that recapitulate the classic bowl. Finally, he models the Yō sculptures—inspired by the appearance of a pregnant woman—from large clay cylinders into rolls and folds as if sculpted by the rise and fall of a gentle breath.
The merit of Isezaki’s works was recognized in 2022 when he was awarded the prestigious top prize by the Japan Ceramic Society, and his work is in the public collection of the National Crafts Museum, Kanazawa. Isezaki will join the ceramicist Jeff Shapiro of upstate New York, who trained as an apprentice to Jun Isezaki and who in turn trained Koichiro Isezaki in America from 2000–2002, for an artist talk.
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