Windswept: Sculptural porcelain by Kino Satoshi

Windswept

Porcelain Sculpture by Kino Satoshi

April 2020

We are delighted to present our second solo exhibition with porcelain sculptor, KINO SATOSHI (b. 1987).  Celebrated for his rippling, ribbon-like sculptures in celadon-glazed porcelain, Kino recently won the important Special Under-35 Award of the twenty-fifth Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition.

The natural elements of air and water are the artist’s principle current source of inspiration. It is both their power and gentility that Kino strives to evoke in his sculptural interpretations. In these works, Kino conjures powerful wind gusts as they descend from mountain slopes, in turns swirling, billowing or wafting, often disrupting the landscape in their path. The Japanese word for such a mountain wind is oroshi and for our exhibition, he has created new “ribbon-like” delicate sculptures covered in his characteristic seihakuji (bluish-white) glaze for this Oroshi series, each work portraying one characteristic of such prevailing blasts of air. 

To create his perfectly balanced, yet ethereal-looking sculptures, Kino employs a painstaking process. First throwing a spherical band on the wheel, rather than mold-casting, he next severs this tapered band into segments. Using the centrifugal force of the wheel, he manually transforms these thin, attenuated, sections into flowing works of art. After drying, he thoroughly sands the entire work prior to bisque firing. Then, before the final firing in a reduction atmosphere, he applies his customary translucent seihakuji (bluish-white) glaze. 

The resulting sculptures have earned Kino multiple international awards and participation in exhibitions from Asia to Europe and the United States. Many have entered the permanent collections of major museums such as the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, The Fuping International Ceramic Museum, China and the Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo in Japan.