Toki is located in Gifu Prefecture, a region famous for pottery. Ryota Aoki is a young ceramic artist, living and creating his works in Toki. Aoki’s freewheeling style has breathed new life into traditional Japanese ceramic styles. The most impressive section of his studio is the room where he studies glazes. Aoki says he loves researching glazes and goes through an incredible number of trial-and-error attempts with glazes until he finds the perfect balance within glazes that satisfies him.

Aoki’s works, called Akakinji, Shinjuji and Shinkaiji, have special effects with their own expressions. Just like the beautiful colors of jewel beetles, his works change their appearance depending on the lighting and viewing angle. Akakinji, made of red glazes with subtle shades of gold, is supposed to very difficult to create. Aoki spent two years working to discover the technique of actually kneading glazes into clay instead of applying the glaze after firing. Since the very high temperature melts the glaze and causes the bottom part of the work to stick to the kiln, it has been taboo to knead glazes into clay. Aoki, however, devised the new technique and succeeded in creating innovative textures.

In this exhibition, we will show Aoki’s various works, related to traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony as well as the contemporary way of tea ceremony coordination in our modern Tea Room at eN arts. At the Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyoto www.tomiokoyamagallery.com, Aoki will exhibit objets d’art, using gold glaze, themed “King”. In Kyoto, this fall, we hope you will enjoy the two exhibitions at Tomio Koyama Gallery & eN arts where many different aspects of Ryota Aoki’s world will be shown.