Ogawa Machiko: Lunar Fragments
November 13 - December 19, 2014

  • Ogawa Machiko returns to Joan B Mirviss, LTD for her second solo exhibition, "Lunar Fragments". She presents a new body of work featuring boulder-like sculptures of unglazed porcelain with translucent, crystallized formed glass. The artist draws her inspiration for these elemental, yet strikingly modern pieces from a life-long interest in rocks and minerals. In another series, her forms suggest deconstructed and broken vessel fragments and contain interior pools of clear blue glass. Renown for her technical skill, she blends feldspar, silica, and glass with porcelain and stoneware in her sculptural works. Her teabowls likewise demonstrate her acumen with materials with their bold, unctuous and varied glazes poured over rough, powerful stoneware forms.

    A pioneer since the beginning of her artistic career, Ogawa was the first woman admitted to the prestigious ceramic department at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music and is one of only six women to be awarded the Japanese Ceramic Society Prize since its inception is 1954. A testament to her critical success, Ogawa has already been the focus of two major Japanese museum career retrospectives: Today’s Artists VIII: Ogawa Machiko Li2O・NaO・Cao・Al2O3・SiO2 Breathing Bubbles, in 2002 at Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama and Umaretate no utsuwa (Archetypical Vessels), in 2011 at Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi. Lunar Fragments will first be shown at Salon: Art + Design (November 13-17) and thereafter at Joan B. Mirviss LTD (November 24- December 19)

    SALON ART + DESIGN
    Park Avenue Armory (at 66th Street) New York, NY
    Joan B Mirviss Ltd. November 24 – December 19

  • LUNAR FRAGMENTS: THE CERAMIC SCULPTURE OF OGAWA MACHIKO
    November 13-December 19, 2014

    New York.- Joan B Mirviss LTD, the leading gallery of modern and contemporary Japanese clay art, is honored to present Lunar Fragments, our second major solo exhibition of the arresting sculpture of Japan’s leading female clay sculptor, Ogawa Machiko. The first woman of her generation of ceramicists to achieve both artistic and critical success, Ogawa stands apart from her colleagues, male and female, as she has already been the focus of two major Japanese museum retrospectives.

     

  • Her new body of work features exceptionally naturalistic boulder-like sculptures of unglazed porcelain with fused crystallizations of molten cracked glass glaze. These elemental yet strikingly modern pieces appear as if unearthed from a quarry and evoke both the crater-filled surface of the moon and sparkling celestial bodies, denying the nature of their complicated and painstaking creation. A longtime collector of rocks and minerals during her extensive international travels, Ogawa fittingly equates the joy she feels from her creative process to that of a miner, who after years of excavation, finally discovers a vein of ore.

  • In another series, the artist’s forms suggest broken vessel fragments, deconstructed, as if unearthed on an archaeological dig having weathered the effects of the passage of time. These archetypal triangular bi-fold forms contain pools of glass glaze and appear as if literally torn from a large orb. Ogawa uses her highly honed technical abilities and an intellectual focus to mix numerous clays and glazes to achieve magical surface affects through multiple firings.  Feldspar, silica, and glass and metallic glazes are all used in the creation of not only her sculptural works but also her elegant teabowls and platters.

  • Ogawa insists on allowing the materials to guide her in the creative process. She embraces those works that other artists might consider failures, allowing her in the course of forming and shaping, to reveal the natural character of both the clay and the glaze.

    Kazuo Amano, Chief Curator, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art and art critic

  • Ogawa Machiko was the first woman admitted to the prestigious ceramic department at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music; she further studied at the École d’Arts  et Métiers in Paris. While young and living in Burkina Faso in West Africa, she was able to learn and draw inspiration from the native workers who fired in the sunlight.

    Among her numerous prizes, Ogawa is one of only six women to be awarded the prestigious Japan Ceramic Society Award since its inception is 1954. Her work was featured in two recent seminal US exhibitions: Touch Fire: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics by Women Artists in 2009 and Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century in 2007 and is in the permanent collection of major museums throughout the world including National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura; Suntory Museum of Art; and in the United States, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; and Yale University Art Gallery.

  • Lunar Fragments will first be shown at Salon: Art + Design (November 13-17) and thereafter at Joan B. Mirviss LTD (November 24- December 19)

    SALON ART + DESIGN
    Park Avenue Armory (at 66th Street)
    New York, NY
    Friday & Saturday November 14  & 15   11 am - 9 pm
    Sunday November 16    11 am – 7 pm
    Monday November 17   11 am - 5 pm

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