Exhibitions

Collection

Taizo Kuroda: White Porcelain

Dates: January 12–April 9, 2019

Organizers: Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum

The white porcelain of ceramicist Taizo Kuroda possesses a strength full of tension while simultaneously exuding a quiet calm that allows it to melt into the space. This will be the first museum exhibition devoted exclusively to this international artist with work in the collections of major museums in Japan, and around the world. Heading in 1966 at just twenty years of age to Paris and a fateful encounter with ceramicist Tatsuzo Shimaoka—later accorded Living National Treasure status—Kuroda then began his pottery career in Canada. Upon returning to Japan, he pursued with enormous energy a range of ceramic techniques, until, at the age of forty-five, setting himself three conditions for his works thereafter—they had to be vessels, monochrome, and formed on the wheel—and concentrating exclusively on the production of white porcelain.

This exhibition is a survey of where Kuroda’s journey in white porcelain has brought him, around half a century on from his first encounter with the potter’s wheel, via a vast selection of outstanding pieces including cylinders, meiping vases, flower vases and platters. The abstract realm exhibited by white porcelain, rendered pure by the extreme extinguishing of individuality through dialogue with the clay; the soft, supple yet tension-filled forms created by the turning of the wheel; the lustrous shadows of surfaces polished after yakishime firing without glaze; the rims coaxed delicately into the air: Kuroda’s pieces display their special beauty in infinite ways. Don’t miss this opportunity to savor the last word in white porcelain ware, courtesy of an artist who since returning to Japan in 1981 and setting up a kiln in Izu, has spent the best part of forty years in Shizuoka pursuing the possibilities of vessels.

  • Untitled, 2018 © Taizo Kuroda Photo: Tadayuki Minamoto

  • Untitled, 2018 © Taizo Kuroda Photo: Tadayuki Minamoto

  • Untitled, 2012 © Taizo Kuroda Photo: Tadayuki Minamoto

  • Untitled, 2018 © Taizo Kuroda Photo: Tadayuki Minamoto

  • Untitled, 2018 © Taizo Kuroda Photo: Tadayuki Minamoto

  • © Taizo Kuroda Photo: Tadayuki Minamoto

Hours: Jan 10:00–16:30 / Feb–Mar 10:00–17:30 / Apr 10:00–18:00 (entry permitted until 30 minutes before closing) Closed on Wednesdays
Admission: Jan–Mar Adults ¥1,000 (¥900) / High School and College Students ¥500 (¥400) / Elementary and Junior High School Students Free
Apr Adults ¥1,200 (¥1,100) / High School and College Students ¥800 (¥700) / Elementary and Junior High School Students Free ※rates in parenthesis for groups of 20 people or more

Profile

  • Taizo Kuroda

    Photo: Tadayuki Minamoto
    1946
    Born in Notogawacho, Shiga.
    1966
    Spends a year in Paris.
    Meets ceramicist Tatsuzo Shimaoka (later accorded Living National Treasure status).
    1967
    Spends six months in New York before moving to Canada,
    where he begins studying ceramics under Geatan Beaudin.
    Returns to Japan twice to study under Tatsuzo Shimaoka in Mashiko.
    1975
    Works as a designer for the pottery company SIAL in Canada.
    1978
    Establishes a studio in St. Gabriel, Quebec.
    1981
    Returns to Japan and establishes a studio in Matsuzaki on the Izu Peninsula.
    1991
    Moves his residence and studio to Futo, Izu Peninsula.
    1992
    Shows his first white porcelain works in Tokyo, thereafter working exclusively in white porcelain.
    2015
    Publishes Taizo Kuroda White Porcelain / Kyuryudo
    2017
    Publishes Hakuji e (To White Porcelain) / Heibonsha

    Major solo shows of his work have been held at the Hankyu Umeda Main Store Art Gallery (Osaka), Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi Main Store Art Gallery (Tokyo), Takashimaya Nihonbashi Store Art Gallery (Tokyo), Tanimatsuya Toda Gallery (Osaka), Galerie Yoshii (Tokyo), and Kaikai Kiki Gallery (Tokyo) with Tanimatsuya Toda Gallery. Major group exhibitions include “Craft Arts: Innovation of ‘Tradition and Avant-Garde,’ and the Present Day” at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2016), “Simple Forms: Contemplating Beauty” at Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2015), “Contemporary Kōgei Styles in Japan” at The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens (Florida, USA, 2013), “Master Teabowls of Our Days” at Musée Tomo (Tokyo, 2013), and “Contemporary Crafts Now: Five Voices” at Rakusui-tei Museum of Art (Toyama, 2013).
    His work is in the collections of, among others, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Cleveland Museum of Art (Ohio, USA), Brooklyn Museum (New York, USA), Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK), and Dia:Beacon (New York, USA).