By Cammi Climaco
While I’ve followed Takuro Kuwata on Instagram for the past seven years, I’ve only seen his work floating by on a glowing two-inch by two-inch screen. Seeing his show Together Shiyoze! (Let’s Get Together!) at Salon 94, through February 15th, was a bit of a parasocial experience. I was confidently familiar with Kuwata’s work, so much so, I thought I would walk into the show and just see Instagram; bright white backgrounds and flat, tiny pieces with big color. But, as someone who makes ceramics, teaches ceramics, and thinks about ceramics at least twelve hours a day, it had an in-person wow factor I wasn’t expecting and was surprisingly more intimate.
Looking closely at his pieces, I could see the story of the maker: the hands, the anger, the ecstasy, the glory, the defeat, his ego and humor. He’s showing us a Japanese man in Japan and a Japanese man in America. And most importantly, a ceramicist who clearly loves this material. He gives us the the paths of construction—some quick, sloppy finger marks and big moments of refinement with his super smooth surfaces. There are places where the clay wasn’t going to do his bidding anymore, with the not-sorry cracks and glaze drips, and other places of pure, planned excellence.
Comprised of chawan, the Japanese tea bowl forms, and lumps big and small, which Kuwata has been working with for more than a decade, the work varies in scale, from hand-sized to hot tub sized. The chawan has been the anchor of the Japanese tea ceremony since around the 13th century. As a ceramics student, I know it as one of the most important forms in ceramics history. Achieving the perfect chawan, for makers, is the holy grail of form (lol, weird Western reference). Potters can and will spend their entire lives making them and chasing the perfect tea bowl, and it’s not weird at all. The form itself is allusive; it’s a concept. In the show, we get to see this classic form pushed and pulled, bloated and adorned. Sometimes, it looks like a fat old king on a throne, and sometimes, a young business exec, sleeker and smarter than you are.
Shifting from functional to sculptural, the lumps move from cupcakes to mountains. From monoliths to animal/vegetable/mineral bodies, the forms themselves aren’t complicated. The finger marks make the pieces feel loose, fast, and free like he just whipped this giant form out because he knew you were coming, and he’s got somewhere to be in like two hours.
Kuwata does this great trick in his work: the color draws you in, and at the same time, the texture pushes you away. On some pieces, the opulent mirrored surfaces are so good, you see yourself reflected in a hundred infinite different parallaxes ways. On other pieces, that same luster feels like obnoxious and repulsive affluence. Some of the protrusions on the forms feel so heavy and gross, like unhealthy; I had this errant thought: I should immediately stop eating sugar, go on a diet, and start volunteering.
I’m obsessed with how ceramics is displayed, and what the work is actually sitting on in the exhibition. It’s a problem that ceramic object makers are always trying to solve: a plinth? A white cube? Bricks? In the front room of the show, Salon 94 paired the work with zinc tables made by designer Max Lamb. The mirrored surfaces of the zinc did really elevate the experience of the pieces. The cold steel was warmed by soft reflections of the work and the soft curves and thick welds created landscape maps, like some weird game of Risk.
There’s some real creator power happening in the back room Zen garden installation. As opposed to the more straightforward presentation of the front room, this is how Kuwata, the Japanese ambassador, wants us to see his work. The garden takes up the entire room, the size of a small New York ballroom, and gives each giant piece the space it needs. There are carefully placed moss and giant rocks in the garden as well, with his work existing either on or or around them, as if we were experiencing real nature in real-time. Contrasting his consistently abstract work are giant peaches. These peaches have an uncanniness to them, which gave the whole piece a sort of cartoonish fairy tale movie set quality.
Kuwata does this great trick in his work: the color draws you in, and at the same time, the texture pushes you away.
The artist/maker is evident in the work, not just in the craftsmanship, which is unapologetic, but in the size and most importantly, in the mimicking of nature. There are some cracks in the pieces, but they have a “So what?” quality showing the maker as both humble and masterful. Some kintsugi repair was so sloppy it was funny. It really endeared them to me. Takuro Kuwata gets cracks; I get cracks. When the drip chawan pieces get bigger, they lose a little bit of the unknown nature of the clay itself; the places where the clay is supposed to have shrunk feel unnatural and obvious like he’s making fun of himself.
My personal favorite piece in the show was a big white chawan form with red, yellow, and blue additions, lustered balls, and giant feldspathic rocks which were coming out of the outside and crushed into the inside. Clays and glazes are around 40-60% feldspar and I’ve never seen the rocks in their raw form, only ground up in powders, and they’re so beautiful. The piece is like honoring your material ancestors with a little science nerd in there. Total flex.
The world is in the middle of a sexual recession, and this show is a quiet respite from everything PG. Sometimes subtle and sometimes overtly sexual, Kuwata’s abstract pieces are posing, dripping, oozing, with phalluses, erections, humps, lumps. And the peaches? The internet says peaches in the United States and Japan pretty much mean the same thing. Is this Kuwata just flirting with us?
Cammi Climaco is a ceramicist and multidisciplinary artist based in Queens, New York, with a studio practice in Brooklyn. She earned her BFA in Crafts from Kent State University and an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Cammi has taught at institutions such as Pratt Institute, 92Y, BKLYN CLAY, and Greenwich House Pottery. In addition to her teaching and studio work, she co-hosted The Ceramics Podcast and now hosts The Ceramics Companion, where she talks about ceramics.
Takuro Kuwata: Together Shiyoze! (Let’s Get Together!) is on view at Salon 94, New York, between January 10 and February 15, 2025.
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Images courtesy of the artist and Salon 94 © Takuro Kuwata
Captions
- Chawan, 2024, Porcelain, glaze, platinum, gold, 23 1/4 x 24 3/4 x 25 5/8 in / 59 x 63 x 65 cm
- Chawan (Violet / Gold), 2024, Bronze, vapor deposit plating, and urethane paint, 32 5/8 x 36 x 41 1/2 in / 82.9 x 91.4 x 105.4 cm
- Chawan, 2024, Porcelain, glaze, feldspar, pigment, gold, platinum, 21 5/8 x 20 1/8 x 27 1/2 in / 55 x 51 x 70 cm
