Please join Inma Barrello, a KYOTOGRAPHIE exhibiting artist, ceramic artist Jun Kawajiri, and Brett Littman, from the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum Director, New York, for a discussion on Inma's KYOTOGRAPHIE project and the tradition of Kyoto ceramics, restoration of color, pattern, and kintsugi (gold-plated joints), also discussing the difficulties and possibilities of supporting tradition, while touching on the current state of the kiln and its economics.
Jun Kawajiri is an 11th-generation potter and a contemporary artist; he lives in Kyoto.
Speakers
Inma Barrero (KYOTOGRAPHIE 2023 Artist)
Jun Kawajiri (Ceramic Artist)
Jun Kawajiri is a ceramic artist born in Kyoto in 1964, he earned his doctorate in design from Tokyo University of Arts. His work explores the beauty of Japanese Aesthetics which is markedly different from the Western emphasis on balanced forms. kawajiri's unique perspective is evident in the unbalanced shapes of tea bowls used in tea ceremonies, the unbalanced shapes of windows and pillars inside tea rooms, and folding screen paintings that leave extreme margins.
He has held individual exhibitiions at venues such as the Kyoto Takashimaya Art Gallery, and his work can be found in collections including the Kyoto Municiple Museaum of Art, the Royal Swedish Household, and the Osaka University Museum, as well as the Shigaraki Ceramic Museum, among others. He has authored "Yugami o Mederu" and has contributed columns to the Sankei Shinbun. Kawajiri has also produced works for companies such as Shogakukan's "Waraku" and Yoshinoya's "120th anniversary, the best rice bowl ever."
Brett Littman (Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York)
Don Stahl
Brett Littman has been the Director of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York since May 2018. He was Executive Director of The Drawing Center from 2007–2018; Deputy Director of MoMA PS1 from 2003–2007; Co-Director of Dieu Donné Papermill from 2001–2003 and Associate Director of Urban Glass from 1996–2001.
Littman’s interests are multi-disciplinary: he has personally curated more than thirty exhibitions over the last decade, dealing with visual art, outsider art, craft, design, architecture, poetry, music, science, and literature. He was named the curator of Frieze Sculpture at Rockefeller Center in 2019 and 2020. He is also an art critic and lecturer and an active essayist for museum and gallery catalogues, in addition to writing articles for a wide range of U.S. and international art, fashion, and design magazines.
A native New Yorker, Brett Littman received a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from France in 2017 and has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego.
