This exhibition celebrates the achievement of four members of the Kondo family: Kondo Yuzo (1902–1985); his sons Yutaka (1932–1983) and Hiroshi (1936–2012); and his grandson Takahiro (born 1958). Based in Kyoto, Japan’s former capital city and a time-honored hub of cultural production, all four artists received intense early training in the use of the potter’s wheel. Both Yuzo and Hiroshi devoted their careers to creating wheel-thrown porcelain vessels decorated with lively painted motifs. Yutaka worked mostly in stoneware, creating pieces that reflect influences from Korean ceramics and Western abstract art. Over half the exhibition is devoted to work by Kondo Takahiro, the youngest member of the family. For much of his career he has rejected the potter’s wheel in favor of other techniques including hand building, molding, marbling, and casting. In 2004 he patented a distinctive glaze called ginteki (“silver mist”), which, composed of several precious metals, forms a mass of gleaming, mirror-like beads after being kiln fired.
Mounds and Mist: Kondo Traditions in Clay features a wide range of work that explores the potential of vessels and abstract forms in combination with “Silver Mist,” including six tall Monoliths, made from blocks of porcelain and cast glass. The exhibition also highlights Takahiro’s most consequential contributions to contemporary ceramic art: eight Reflections and a single Reduction, portrait sculptures cast from the artist’s own head and body. These major statements resonate with Japan’s Buddhist heritage and express the artist’s response to natural and manmade disasters and other pressing issues of shared global concern.
This exhibition is organized by Crow Museum of Asian Art based on the exhibition Transcendent Clay/Kondo: A Century of Japanese Ceramic Art originally presented by the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, guest curated by Joe Earle.
The Crow Museum of Asian Art extends its gratitude to Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz, whose generosity and enthusiasm made this exhibition possible.