Kohei Nakamura 「Chawan: Perceiving Kohei Nakamura」

Sunday, March 6 - Saturday, March 26, 2016

Opening Reception: Sat, Mar 5, 1:00pm - 4:00pm 　 Place: Ryosokuin, The Oldest Zen Temple Kenninji
The artist will be at the gallery on Mar 5-6, 11-12, 15-19.

Kohei Nakamura was born as the third son of Baizan Nakamura, Kanazawa-based ceramicist; Kohei grew up, being familiar with clay. Since graduating from the sculpture Department of Tama Art University in 1973, Nakamura has worked on creating avant-garde decorative contemporary ceramic objects.
Nakamura has steadily built his reputation both domestically and internationally as his work was collected by The Metropolitan Museum.
Interestingly, while having his outstanding caving skill and creativity, Nakamura has worked on recreating tea bowls such as Ido[井戸] style tea bowls for the past 10 years. What can we find from his career shift from creating contemporary art works to making tea bowls.
Nakamura is eventually creating his own tea bowls beyond Utsushi, namely reproduction of a masterpiece. His production method has started from “Utsushi”.
However the characteristic of Nakamura’s work lies in understanding the essence of tea bowls and projecting his account and idea onto his works by means of following antique vessels rather than simply copying the forms of them.
It is our great pleasure to present twenty created tea bowls. These are the result of Nakamura’s quest to express his conceptual ideas in his first solo exhibition at the gallery in the Kansai area.

Installation View