Yukiya Izumita's ‘Expanding Earth’ mimicks the inhospitable northern coasts of Japan

Ippodo Gallery New York unveils Japanese artist Yukiya Izumita’s latest sculptural endeavours, in an upcoming exhibition titled Expanding Earth: New Works by Yukiya Izumita. The leading ceramic artist returns to NY with his fifth solo exhibition in the United States, from September 12 - October 3, 2024. The art exhibition is set to display over 40 of Izumita’s laminate-layered sculptures, flat-folded vases and tea bowls in ceramic.

From his remote kiln in Japan’s Tohoku region, Izumita incorporates unique elements of Iwate Prefecture—its harsh northern climate and rural coastal environment—into his black, yellow and red clay works. He ‘hand-carries’ the coastal clay in large quantities along with driftwood back to his studio, as an intrinsic aspect of his craft. His works thus arise from what is washed ashore, the sea-soaked earth lending a rudimentary salt-firing element that appears ‘rustic and ancient,’ encased in a rare manganese glaze.

“Izumita seeks out a language of lightness in his sculptures that expertly disguises the heavy reality of earth. His designs seem to float without concern; the ceramic walls are shaped on paper sheets at calculated angles in perfect balance. The salt-rich clay is combined with Chamotte to emulate the rough-hewn texture and colours of Iwate’s sea-battered cliff faces like a fossil record of the passage of time,” the Ippodo Gallery explains.

First training under potter Gakuho Shimodake in Kokuji-ware (pottery long lauded within the mingei movement), the sculpture artist intrinsically intertwines his wares with this expression of rock, geochronology and tumultuous landscape. Despite facing tsunamis and other disasters that test his ceramic practice in Noda Village, Izumita subsumes these trials into a refined sensitivity for the delicate and natural. His rhythmic, dynamic clay sheets, folded into looping spirals and layered stacks, evoke the rolling tides breaking on the shore.

“In Expanding Earth, Izumita mimics sceneries of earthen formations, which has pushed the physical constraint of hand-built ceramic as well as revealed a specific quality of nature. A language of lightness in his sculptures expertly disguises the heavy reality of Earth,” conveys the art gallery. “Izumita’s unseen sceneries of earthen formations demonstrate his capacity to push the physical constraints of hand-built ceramic and miraculously defy the laws of gravity withstanding the intensity of the anagama tunnel-kiln fire,” they add.

The award-winning ceramicist expresses the realities of Japan’s inhospitable northern coasts through his ceramic art, as witnessed in Expanding Earth. Izumita’s ceramics are part of permanent collections of world-class institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery and Minneapolis Institute of Art. In Japan, Izumita is the recipient of accolades including the Excellence Award at the 20th Biennial Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition in 2009 and the Asahi Ceramic Exhibition Grand Prix in 2000 and 2002.