Form in Motion: Sculpture by Fujikasa Satoko

With a waiting list of curators and collectors that extended back several years, the much-anticipated first international exhibition of Fujikasa Satoko’s gravity-defying sculptures has completely sold out one month before even opening!

Her ceramic sculptures appear to be made of the lightest gauze fabric, being swirled and swept up as if being caught in gusts of wind or swelling eddies. Others embody the vitality of flourishing plants, stretching out and unfurling before one’s eyes. They all capture glimpses of nature’s most vivacious movements, creating a synergy between the solidity of clay and intangible forces. Fujikasa (b. 1980) elucidates on the inspiration behind her fluid and dynamic artworks,

"It is through my intimate dialogue with my medium that I am able to express nature’s fluid energy. Drawing from both the beauty and power of this world and the emotional response that they evoke, I hope to convey nature’s life force in the mind of the viewer."

Due to the time-consuming nature of Fujikasa’s creative process, this exhibition only includes thirteen works created over the course of two years. They are handbuilt by carefully melding together thin coils of highly desirable, coarse yet pliable, clay from Shigaraki. Due to the extraordinary thinness of the sculpture’s walls, varying from two centimeters to three millimeters, controlling the drying time is the most difficult aspect of her technique. Thus, it can take months to complete a single work.

In 2011, just after one year out of graduate school at the prestigious Tokyo University of the Arts, Fujikasa burst upon the art scene with her prize-winning solo exhibition at the Hagi Uragami Museum. Since then, ten of her major works have entered the collections of prominent museums in Japan, France and the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Musée Cernuschi in Paris, where they remain on continuous view.

Joan B. Mirviss is the leading western dealer in the field of modern and contemporary Japanese ceramics, and from her New York gallery on Madison Avenue, Joan B. Mirviss LTD exclusively represents the top Japanese clay artists. As a widely published and highly respected specialist in her field for over thirty-five years, Mirviss has advised and built collections for many museums, major private collectors and corporations.

For more information or to request high-resolution images,
please contact Wendy Fuglestad at 212-799-4021
or by email to director@mirviss.com