Japanese Kōgei Future Forward at the MAD New York

Continuing its curatorial focus on the fertile middle ground between art and design, New York’s Museum of Arts and Design collaborates with 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa to mount Japanese Kōgei Future Forward – an unparalleled survey of 12 emerging to established practitioners, upholding the highly skilled craft-oriented tradition with their own twists. The showcase looks to examine the changes taking place in the deeply-rooted Kōgei discipline – blurring the boundaries of artisanal and artistic expression – specific to certain regions and techniques. These mavericks employ age old methods – like raki or tea bowl ceramics – to address more individual, conceptual, topical and global issues. Some works even draw from bold strains of contemporary Japanese culture. “There is a technical ability inherent in Kōgei that has the capacity to unleash intense, future-oriented visual imagery,” 21st-Century Museum of Contemporary Art director Yūji Akimoto explains. Iterations move from viscerally geometric to anthropomorphic grotesque and cartoon-like softness.

Japanese Kōgei Future Forward features work by Katsuyo Aoki, Yūki Hayama, Takashi Ikura, Tatsuo Kitamura, Takurō Kuwata, Masayasu Mitsuke, Kōhei Nakamura, Shinkyō Nakamura, Harumi Noguchi, Toshio Ōhi, Yuri Takemura and Shin’ya Yamamura.

Japanese Kōgei Future Forward: till 7 February 2016 at the MAD: 2 Columbus Circle, New York