#010
Yuta Nakamura

中村 裕太

Questioned by the Moon

ARTIST
ONGOING
ARTIST

Yuta Nakamura, Matsumoto Haruka, Ōtagaki Rengetsu, Ishiguro Munemaro, Kawai Kanjirō, Hamada Shōji, Bernard Leach, Yagi Kazuo

2024.11.29 Fri. — 2024.12.13 Fri.
ONGOING
#010
Yuta Nakamura

中村 裕太

Questioned by the Moon

ARTIST
ONGOING
ARTIST

Yuta Nakamura, Matsumoto Haruka, Ōtagaki Rengetsu, Ishiguro Munemaro, Kawai Kanjirō, Hamada Shōji, Bernard Leach, Yagi Kazuo

2024.11.29 Fri. — 2024.12.13 Fri.
ONGOING
Introduction

The 10th edition of the Ginza Curator’s Room will feature Yuta Nakamura, Artist and Associate Professor at Kyoto Seika University. The exhibition, titled Questioned by the Moon, draws inspiration from fascinating anecdotes surrounding the poet, Ōtagaki Rengetsu. While focusing on the theme of imitation in modern craft culture, Nakamura will explore the concept of imitation in contemporary art through the works of printmaker and courtroom artist Matsumoto Haruka, as well as his own creations.

13

Yuta Nakamura

Inishiewo tsukinitoharuru kokochishite fushimegachinimo narukoyoikana

2024

Photo: Hyogo Mugyuda

Matsumoto Haruka

Blood Stone and Spider (Takahata Mountain / Corregidor)

2019

Ōtagaki Rengetsu

Freshwater Jar

Outline
Date

2024.11.29 Fri. — 2024.12.13 Fri.

Closed on Sunday

Hours

10:00 — 18:00

Contact

Shibunkaku Ginza

TEL: 03-3289-0001

MAIL: tokyo@shibunkaku.co.jp

Supported by Nomura Securities Co.,Ltd.

Curator's Statement

Yuta Nakamura

The Moon inquires/Myself and my past/I avert its gaze and look down/This evening

Ōtagaki Rengetsu

 

As a source of income, the poet Ōtagaki Rengetsu (late Edo-Meiji Period, 1791-1875) crafted hand-sculpted pottery with her waka poems inscribed with a nail. Imitations of her work were already common as her works were popular souvenirs among Kyoto’s art connoisseurs.

One day, a merchant attempting to make an imitation piece visited and confided to Rengetsu, “I can’t seem to get the carvings of the words right.” In response, it is said that Rengetsu replied, “My pleasure,” directly incising onto the merchant’s ceramic ware, in addition to gifting them with an original to use as a model.

This anecdote, cited by Yanagi Sōetsu in his essay “On Imitation,” is not necessarily untrue*1. In a recent excavation at Shōgoin-mura where the poet reportedly lived, imitation Rengetsu ware by an individual named Tamaki Ryōsai was discovered amidst authentic pieces*2. Though distinct from most imitations as Ryōsai’s ceramics were carved with his poems and directly instructed by Rengetsu, they still lack the rustic charm of Rengetsu-ware.

If so, then how does one properly imitate her work? In the first part of his anecdote about Rengetsu, Yanagi quotes Shōji Hamada as saying, “Imitations are usually worse than the originals because most of them only attend to the result and not to their causal process.”

When I look at Haruka Matsumoto’s work, I am reminded of Hamada’s quote. Matsumoto, who also works as a courtroom artist, is interested in the underlying cause of a crime instead of the crime itself. Visiting the crime scene as an observer, she creates lithographs of the fragmented reality she witnesses. On the other hand, Yuta Nakamura, who is interested in modern Japanese art and craftwork, gathers historical artifacts and documentation to sculpt clay while imagining the causes of such circumstantial evidence. His handling of these small objects reanimates the past from which they emerged.

By connecting and examining a series of events (the excavated Tamaki Ryōsai-ware, a roundtable discussion on imitation by a Mingei circle, Yagi Kazuo’s theory on Nibansha and Munemaro Ishiguro, and the forged print scandal), these two artists—who feel as if Rengetsu herself is asking them about imitation—seek to demonstrate an exact contemporary form of imitation without averting their gazes.

 

                                    

1: Yanagi Sōetsu “On Imitation,” Selected Works on Religion, 1960

2: Yutaka Chiba “On Imitation Ceramics of Rengetsu-ware,” Annual Report on the Research and Investigation of Kyoto University Archaeological Sites, 2018

Curator / Artist

Yuta Nakamura

Artist. Born in Tokyo in 1983. He now resides in Kyoto. Nakamura re­ceived his PhD in Art from Kyoto Seika Univer­sity in 2011. Asso­ciate Pro­fessor, Depart­ment of Fine Arts, Kyoto Seika Univer­sity. Nakamura is en­gaged in aca­demic re­search and produc­tion in the area of tiles and ceramics, from a view­point of craft asso­ciated with the folk and architecture, coming up with hypoth­eses based on pub­lished re­search and field­work obser­vations to pro­duce his own experi­mental sculp­tural objects, as part of his inqui­ries into margin­al art-craft culture from the modern period onward.

Recent exhibitions include “Locus of a Butterfly: HASEGAWA Saburo’s Illusion” held at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto in 2023. “Object Lessons” held at Gal­lery Koyanagi, Tokyo in 2023. 17th Istanbul Bien­nial held at Barın Han, Istanbul, Turkey in 2022. “Listen­ing with Eyes and Look­ing with Ears | NAKAMURA Yuta feels his way to Kawai Kanjiro” held at The Nation­al Muse­um of Modern Art, Kyoto in 2022. “BANBUTSU SHISEI | Born from all things: A spe­cial blend by Yuta Nakamura” held at Shisei­do Gallery, Tokyo in 2022. “MAM Re­search 007: Sodei­sha – The Dawn of Contem­porary Japa­nese Ceramics” held at Mori Art Muse­um in 2019. “Aichi Trien­nale 2016” held at Aichi Prefec­tural Muse­um of Art in 2016. “20th Bien­nale of Sydney” held at Carriage­works in 2016. He is co-author of “Out of MINGEI” (Seiko­sha, 2019).

https://nakamurayuta.jp/

Photo: Hyogo Mugyuda

Artist

Matsumoto Haruka

Printmaker and artist, born 1993 in Kyoto, Japan, completed printmaking in painting at Kyoto City University of Arts in 2018.

Matsumoto has been working on courtroom paintings based in Kansai since 2021. Matsumoto goes to the periphery of events (cases) reported by mass media and creates prints using lithographic techniques based on the information she obtains there.

Recent exhibitions include: “Goodbye Monsters(Tracking by speculation),” Ibaraki City Gallery, 2024; “VOCA Exhibition,” The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, 2024; “Distance from the Incident-How News, War and Daily Life Were Describe’d” Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, 2023; “Graph cast Shift past” at Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art, MonET, and others. Other exhibition projects include “Fishermen and Artists: Inquiring about Lake Biwa, Reading Lake Biwa,” Otsu Wani Library, Otsu, 2022.

Photo: 三輪泰生

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