[I]f Kaneko Jun hadnât been a rebellious lad who refused to attend high school in Nagoya he might not have become one of the leading ceramic artists in the world today. In 1963 kind Muses led him to California where he discovered himself through clay and colors.
Kanekoâs works are displayed in museums and important collections the world overâand are usually of large scale, so his first show in Kyoto since the 1970s is important in that all the pieces shown at Gallery Sokyo are of a much smaller scale than he usually works in, and all of them were made with the galleryâs space in mind. As he told me recently, âI always try to collaborate with space as much as I can, for the work is as important as the space itâs shown in; the piece doesnât exist by itself. A good piece can look pretty bad, depending on the space and how you arrange it.â His comment reminded me of Wallace Stevensâ poem âAnecdote of the Jar,â in which he says,
I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was,
Upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.
Art transforms any space.
For this Kyoto exhibition Kaneko succeeded brilliantly in bringing engaging forms of multi-colored works to the compact space of Sokyo. Each piece was like an actor in its respective âscene,â among the multi-roomed and variously lit portals. Kaneko’s forms and color scheme are very much in the vein of the ancient Japanese aesthetic term basara (ć©ćšçŸ ). Contrasting greatly with the much better-known terms of wabi-sabi, jimi and shibuiâwhich have an underlying Zen Buddhist restraint and quietnessâbasara refers to ostentatiously showy colors and odd forms.
Kaneko further remarked that creating the works after visiting the gallery last year was âan interesting challenge,â similar to the sets and costumes that heâs created for stage dramas. âThe challenge to create such smaller works takes the same amount of creative energy regardless of the size of the piece,â he noted as he glanced around at the works, many of which could be picked up by hand, despite being super-heavy.
Taking ceramic art into sculptural-pictorial realms, Kaneko Jun is an artist who straddles cultures and in a sense transforms them with his borderless art. Itâs not really Japanese and itâs not really American, itâs the unique vision of this Renaissance artist who found his voice by leaving his home shores decades ago. The walls of traditional schools could not hold him back. Rebellion worked, this time.
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