On the maker

Shintaro Uchimura

 

Shintaro Uchimura’s work seems to place particular emphasis on how the vessel—its form—and its content—the textures and details of its surface—are brought into relation with one another, and how they are made to cohere.

The staining of kohiki slip, subtle changes in the spaces between glazes, the way the texture of the clay body gradually settles. These details are made to feel natural through an exceptionally precise sense of form. The contour of a shape, the tension of a surface, the crispness of a pattern: rather than leaving things deliberately ambiguous, his work maintains a sense of balance while retaining a high degree of tension.

Part and whole meet as though their relationship were inevitable. Yet this is not a final state resistant to change; there also seems to be room for the work to continue changing after it has passed into the hands of its owner.

The approach of Sankyo Kiln can be seen as an attempt to dismantle the significance of distinctions such as nature and human intervention, or as a search for the point at which detail and overall form come into balance.

Seen in the dim light of a tea room, Uchimura’s intense attention to detail creates a quiet atmosphere, as though the tea bowl itself had arrived at its own point of equilibrium.

Here and now, there is simply a single warmed bowl. Host and guest need only return to that simple fact.