Takegoshi Jun: Flights of Fancy

NEW YORK - Joan B. Mirviss is pleased to present masterworks in enameled porcelain by Kutani master Takegoshi Jun (b. 1948) to open their autumn season with his exhibition entitled "Flights of Fancy." This will be the artist's second exhibition in the United States and with our gallery, and will feature nearly 40 new works, including several larger scale forms, created specifically for this show.

Born in Ishikawa Prefecture, where Japanese painted porcelain known as Kutani ware has flourished for many centuries, Takegoshi inherited the polychrome overglaze techniques from his father Takegoshi Taizan III (1919-1984), also a master in this tradition. Trained at university in traditional nihonga painting, Takegoshi Jun approaches his white hand-built porcelain vessels as three-dimensional canvases, artfully applying jewel-like glazes to depict various species of birds, flowers and plants in carefully painted, sometimes whimsical compositions. He has uniquely adapted and expanded upon the old Kutani traditional go-sai five-color palette of peacock blue, mustard yellow, eggplant purple, brick red, and emerald green. Through his painterly use of these rich, delicately graded polychrome enamels on visually flat, white porcelain, Takegoshi highlights the push and pull between surface and depth, adding to the contemporary sensibility of his vessels.

Takegoshi was the recipient of the prestigious Japan Ceramic Association Award in 2007 and his works grace important Japanese collections and museums as well as Western institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Newark Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Victoria & Albert Museum; and Yale University Art Gallery.

There will be two artist's talks given in the gallery at the start of the exhibition.
Tuesday, September 14th at 5:00pm
Thursday, September 16th at 11:00am
Reservations required
212-799-4021 nami@mirviss.com