New York City - "The French Connection: Five Japanese Women Ceramists and Their Passion for France" is at Joan B. Mirviss Ltd through August 3. An exhibition of incredible sculptures by Futamura Yoshimi, Katsumata Chieko, Nagasawa Setsuko, Ogawa Machiko and Sakurai Yasuko seeks to expose the very nature of clay, exploiting its flexibility and suppleness in arresting ways.
Some flaunt the limitation of their medium, as Ogawa who scores and tears her clay or Futamura who collapses her vessels, while others defy the medium altogether, like Sakurai with her fascinating perforated porcelain technique. All five are masters of their medium at the vanguard of the development of Japanese ceramics.
This exhibition explores the dramatically increasing importance of Japanese women artists in the current ascendancy of contemporary Japanese ceramics on a global stage, and focuses on how their relationships to France have influenced, and indeed enabled, the five showcased artists to find their unique voices. Spanning two generations, these five women reflect the changes occurring both in Japan and in the filed internationally and are clearly pioneers, especially when viewed from an historical perspective.
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