Taizo Kuroda White Porcelain – Meiping

Opening Reception: May 2nd, 6-8pm

May 02, 2019 - June 22, 2019

“When you repeat the same gestures, do the same thing over and over again, you begin to feel something. Today I am looking for the form I can make over and over again without ever becoming tired […] That is the enso, trying, again and again, making the same gesture, and the same shape, seeking perfection but never attaining it.”

– Taizo Kuroda

Yoshii Gallery is pleased to present the second exhibition of Taizo Kuroda’s ceramics Taizo Kuroda’s White Porcelain. Our first exhibition, Taizo Kuroda White Porcelain Cylinders was in 2017.

Kuroda’s practice is a unique combination of meditation and self-expression, which he uses to seek a harmonious balance of mind and body. Through repetition of form, he is freed to compose and bring to tangible reality shapes that the eye alone cannot imagine. As Lao Zi writes in the Tao Te Ching, “The vase gives form to the void, music to silence.”

Kuroda comments that his “forms are like his thinking” and that “perhaps he is coming closer to himself” in making them. In the process of his work, porcelain shapes him as much as he is shaping it. This tension creates a sort of harmony in his work; his simple forms gain complexity of character and “contain the product of emotions, sensations, and thoughts when not permitted to spread in many directions,” he has said.

In his Meiping vases, what is seen and what is not seen are equally important and create a dynamic between interiority and exteriority that play out before the viewer. The “pure whites” of the unglazed yakishime porcelain seem to absorb and reflect light in even measure. The vases’ sensuous yet firm lines contrast with their commanding yet fragile appearance. An illusory sensation persists; these gravity-bound pieces seem buoyant. Revealed in this interplay between hand and clay is not just the artist’s extraordinary sensibility but also his restraint, fascination, and humility towards his material.

Born in 1946 in Japan, Kuroda’s pursuit of his unique expression started in 1976 when he studied ceramics in Canada. He returned to Japan in 1981 to seek guidance from master ceramicist Tatsuzo Shimaoka. In 1992, Kuroda developed his distinctive style and has been using white porcelain combined with a spirit of free creativity since then. Kuroda is a pioneer of white porcelain, using only his hands and a pottery wheel to spin the purest of white clay into art. Kuroda’s works have been exhibited in Asia, Europe, and the United States. Yoshii Gallery has also presented Taizo Kuroda White Porcelain at Design Miami/Basel 2008, which featured a Tadao Ando designed water-table display for Kuroda’s work.

Kuroda’s works are in the collections of the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art and private collections in Japan, England, and the United States.