In Japan, there is an ongoing balance that takes place involving the cultivation of wild and untamed nature. For humanity and nature to survive together the landscape and its elements must be shaped, leading to a sense of symmetry. Similarly, the practice of ceramics is also part of a centuries-old art form that is deeply connected to the cultural identity of Japan. Ceramics, moreover, comes from clay found in the soft space between water and land. As an aside of earth, wind and sky, clay is the most resonant symbol of a region and its topography. While it is part of a centuries-old tradition, the medium of ceramics is always connected to a context that begins as contemporary before changing over time. Painted Clay: Wada Morihiro & Modern Ceramics of Japan, at Joan B. Mirviss LTD (New York) focuses on the arc of Morihiro’s career and captures the artist’s legacy that extends from Kyoto to central Japan and Tokyo, before continuing north. This detailed exhibition also presents work made by Morihiro’s teachers, his contemporaries and those of a younger generation in order to reveal Wada Morihiro’s cultural context which is grounded in the renewal of post-war Japan, as well as the fast changing character of our contemporary era.
While the early modern era of Japan was characterized by a nationalism that evolved alongside its growing economy before World War II, Tokyo had experienced a catastrophic fire and a destructive earthquake that left the country in an endless state of rebuilding. After the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan had to re-establish its
