Though Takahiro Kondo is a third-generation ceramics artist, his voice is distinctly his own. The Japanese sculptor’s figurative works play with texture and mood, pushing the limits of glazes and form. This style implements the artist’s own, original technique: gintekisai, which is an overglaze containing silver, platinum, and gold. This produces the bubbled texture found on the faces of his characters and objects.
From Adrian Sassoon, a description of how this technique was developed: “Having previously developed the technique of gold overglaze, Takahiro Kondo introduced this technique in 2008, primarily as this was the year of his 50th birthday. He sees his gold work as the culmination of what he can do with this type of overglaze on porcelain. Gold has associations with purity as it never tarnishes, as well as associations with the sun (and silver with the moon) and these associations are also apparent in Takahiro’s work.”
Kondo graduated from Hosei University in Tokyo, and later, received a master’s degree at Edinburgh College of Art. The artist’s work appears in collections across the world, from the U.S. and England to Australia and Japan.
Geng Xue’s ceramic sculptures, with their traditional coloring and textures, appear as beings evolving and emerging from our shelves. She’s used these creations in multimedia exhibition and even filmmaking, animating them into mythology-inspired narratives. As she creates representations of humanity, Xue seems to be reflecting on our own fragility.
