Masaomi Yasunaga
Radical ceramics from Japan evoke rich metaphorical associations with tombs, antiquities, shipwrecks and sea creatures.
Masaomi Yasunaga, “Empty Landscape,” 2020
installation view (courtesy of Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver)
Japanese artist Masaomi Yasunaga’s ceramic vessels seem to hold the secrets of passing time. They relate as strongly to the funeral urn as to the womb. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Yasunaga began the work in his show, Empty Landscape, on view at Vancouver’s Libby Leshgold Gallery until March 29, around the time his grandmother died and his first child was born.
His containers, which explore new ways of working with clay, evoke erosion, decay and new beginnings. Their crumbling layers are earthy yet unearthly, both permanent and impermanent. In this, Yasunaga’s first show in Canada, they are laid atop a long mound of jagged pebbles, set out like antiquities newly raised from an archaeological dig or, perhaps, a shipwreck.
Yasunaga’s work is as innovative as it is evocative. Some pieces are made without clay. Instead, glaze is moulded over earth or ashes that burn away in the kiln. Some are stripped-down crusty membranes, while others are coated with pebbles that adhered during the firing. Crumbling and pockmarked, they resemble timeworn bones, the casings of sea creatures or ancient fossils.
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Masaomi Yasunaga, “Empty Landscape,” 2020
detail of installation (courtesy of Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver)
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Masaomi Yasunaga, “Empty Landscape,” 2020
detail of installation (courtesy of Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver)
His is a unique process. Forms are buried in sand, dirt and other materials before the encased package is fired. In addition to using unrefined clay, which allows impurities like twigs and pebbles to leave tracings, he experiments by adding metals to the surface to achieve subtle hues, whether violet from copper or ochre from titanium.
Yasunaga, who has a Master’s degree in environmental design from Osaka Sangyo University, was taught by Satoru Hoshino, a proponent of the radical ceramics group Sodeisha, or the Crawling Through Mud Association, which coalesced after the Second World War. Historically, Japanese pottery was made mostly in small family-run workshops, but this group was little interested in function and turned its attention to clay’s emotional potential.
Yasunaga likewise continues to break from ceramic conventions, creating forms with a strong emotive pull. He has exhibited widely in Japan, but only had his first American exhibition last summer at a private contemporary gallery, Nonaka-Hill, in Los Angeles.
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Masaomi Yasunaga, “Empty Landscape,” 2020
detail of installation (courtesy of Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver)
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Masaomi Yasunaga, “Empty Landscape,” 2020
detail of installation (courtesy of Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver)
The show’s second component is a menagerie of various animals, all titled Empty Creature, and displayed in a long row along the wall. They retain the vessel form rather than a biological likeness to any particular animal, and read like artifacts that prioritize form over function.
A deer-like creature has long ears and tiny legs, while a bird seems fused to a cobbled nest of stones. One mammal has four torsos, graceful swellings linked by a narrow spine. Such inventions might normally be considered whimsical, but with clay pelts eroded in the way cement is abraded by the sea, they speak more to the magic imbued in prehistoric talismans than to animals designed to amuse children. ■
Masaomi Yasunaga: Empty Landscape is on view at the Libby Leshgold Gallery at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver from Jan. 17 to March 29, 2020.
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Libby Leshgold Gallery (formerly Charles H. Scott Gallery)
520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 0H2
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