Takuro Kuwata

Since 2010, Takuro Kuwata (b. 1981, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan) has expanded the possibilities and pushes the boundaries of ceramic art. Kuwata’s studio is situated at the heart of Japanese ceramic artistry in the Mino region of Gifu Prefecture, which retains techniques dating back to feudal Japan.

Kuwata is a serious student of Chanoyu, the Japanese tea ceremony. He deploys many of the characteristic features of teaware in his work: asymmetry, intentional cracking and drips, and the celebrated technique of kintsugi, in which breaks are repaired with gilt lacquer, drawing attention to their chance beauty. In Kuwata’s work each of these aspects is heightened and exaggerated to punk extremes. His surfaces are deeply fissured, and instead of a single drip down at the base (as is common in historic kairagi glazed pots), Kuwata’s works feature a whole surface full of pendulous drops whose bright metallic luster glazes refer to kintsugi without literally replicating it. For Kuwata, the exhibition space and the ceramics studio have both been spaces for ritual; each are sites for his ongoing performance of reinventing the ancient shape of the tea bowl. Starting in 2016, he also has created monumental ceramic works for outdoor installation.

Over the past year, he has been experimenting with metal casting in aluminum and bronze, discovering colors and textures and new possibilities of scale shift. Experimentation is not incompatible with sheer pleasure and conceptual rigor.

In addition to numerous solo exhibitions globally, Kuwata’s work has been included in recent group exhibitions including Your Home is Where You’re Happy, Haus Modrath, Kerpen (DE) in 2023; Worlds in Balance: Art in Japan from the Postwar to the present, Okura Museum of Art, Tokyo (JP) in 2023; Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art, Hayward Gallery, London (UK) in 2022; and Les Flammes, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (FR) in 2021, among others. The artist was a finalist for the LOEWE Craft Prize 2018.

Kuwata’s work resides in numerous international public and private collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago (IL); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary, Kanazawa (JP); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (NY); Rubell Family Collection, Miami (FL); and The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, among others.