Floating Vessels: Stoneware by Mitsukuni Misaki

Colorless Blue, Colorful Beige 

“All living things gather around water. That is the role of a vessel. As if an oasis. Despite being dearly ordinary, the absence is painfully felt when it's gone. These creations of mine become like invisible air.”     

          The meaning of pottery is not Misaki’s own self-expression, but rather just the opposite. To him, it can be as quiet and slow as possible, close to a silence.

          As the expansive azure sky and the deep blue sea are just out of reach, colorless air and transparent water impossible to grasp, Misaki's works seem to float in this same untouchable state of magnificence and possess our hearts with a sense of cool blue relief. Mashiko clay is a blend of three types of earth (black, white, and red), which Misaki hand-coils into tall, unglazed forms. Misaki’s subtle blue hues are the reward of vast experimentation on tens of thousands of prototype pieces. Mixing the pigment with a formula developed through these many trials, he applies it to the surface of the clay, and then scratches, scores, and rolls a rope and simple tools over the surface to coax a softness. 

New York, NY – Ippodo Gallery presents Floating Vessels: Stoneware by Mitsukuni Misaki, the master ceramicist’s return to New York after six years. Over 30 of Misaki’s latest works from small vases to majestic containers are featured from January 18 to February 15, 2024. Stretching out like a boundless horizon, Misaki’s modern and hand-coiled forms signal those timeless ceramics of ancient peoples. Please join Ippodo Gallery for an opening reception on January 18, 2024.

Mitsukuni Misaki (b. 1951) ventures into the unknown with every new work, producing powerful yet enfolded objects that manifest the dual strength and subtlety of beauty. Born in Chiba in eastern Japan, he graduated Chuo University’s law department, yet a chance encounter with Fujio Koyama (1900-1975)—the scholarly authority on pottery and porcelain, and a potter himself—lodged a desire in Misaki’s heart to pursue ceramics. Traveling about the mainland, Misaki received training in four classical kiln techniques: kutani, uchiharano, aizu hongo, and bizen. This research guided Misaki to begin his own kiln in 1979, where he maintains his secluded and contemplative practice nearly half a century later.

The Japanese archipelago was once home to the Jomon (c. 14,000 to 300 BC), an indigenous culture known only by the vestiges of their pottery. Misaki excavates modeling and decorative inspiration from their wares; his shapes are both sculpted and functional, while the supple surface is rolled with a braided cord for texture and hand-painted with numerous layers of pigmented slip. The philosophy of Mark Rothko also has made a deep impact on Misaki, enticing him to evoke the abstract painter’s color palette of juxtaposing gradients and soft hues. 

Mitsukuni Misaki is a nomadic poet. Wherever he is, he maintains the hypersensitive eye and delicate heart of a traveler. And he pursues with form and color a poetic spirit that does not lend itself to words. This is why Misaki does not remain content with a particular style but departs in pursuit of new creations. Despite the numerous awards he has received to date—the Japan Kōgei Association Encouragement Price, the Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition Grand Prix / Chichibunomiya Trophy, and the Kikuchi Biennale Grand Prix—Misaki never rests on his laurels. In this sense, he is someone who chooses the same path as Saigyo and Basho.

            Above is the opening section of the text I wrote for one of Misaki’s solo exhibitions. I wish to clarify though that Misaki is by no means a Romanticist. By “hypersensitive eye” I mean his sharp observation, and by “delicate heart” his unsullied dislike of falsehood. Misaki initially studied at the Faculty of Law at Chuo University to become a lawyer. But this was at a time of raging student activism, with classes often disrupted. Misaki ended up spending much of his time traveling. After concentrating on become a ceramicist, he continued to move around the country, going from one pottery locale to another. “Wandering, which allowed me to indulge myself in the pain and sweetness of walking in the wind and rain,” a passage from one of his letters, probably describes this period of his life. I sense the same wanderlust still smoldering in his heart.

            Misaki’s creative approach to ceramics, which eschews the unnecessary attachment of meaning, is apparent in another of his letters, in which he wrote: “Living in a time devoid of movement, and thus feeling the need to cool down, I am ‘Rothko-ing’ (not actively doing mental activities and instead pursuing without attaching meaning the random, spontaneous images that come into my head). I am being inactive.”  “Rothko” refers to the artist Mark Rothko and his paintings of color planes that spread boundlessly and cloud-like, emitting a serene radiance. Misaki’s ideal, the image of which his works express, is to live as unperturbed as the clouds spreading boundlessly in the sky.