A Field Guide to Asia Week 2022
Celebrating Asian Art in the Year of the Tiger
By Clanci Jo Conover
March 14, 2022. - Kondō Takahiro’s new porcelain forms will be on view at Joan B. Mirviss LTD, in “Making Waves” from March 16th-25th. The show’s title aligns with the artist’s perpetual interest in water as an element in all its destructive and contrastingly lifegiving glory. The featured porcelain incorporates white clay, which works in unison with darker colors to contribute to Takahiro’s understanding of the shape of water, creating surfaces that appear to be flowing, just as a river or stream would. The result of this technique transforms the sculpted pieces into what Takahiro calls “porcelain ink paintings,” mimicking ancient traditions. He has said about this new body of work, “The process of creating these sculptures made me more aware of how water, waves, and waterfalls flow. By incorporating a whiter clay, my work has evolved and been elevated. I feel that I have expressed the subtle and profound beauty of ink painting without using a brush, but by using clay.” Aptly, INK Studios will present Bingyi’s landscape ink paintings alongside Takahiro’s pottery at Joan B. Mirviss, further illustrating the comparison between porcelain and scroll.
In a joint presentation with New York’s Joan B. Mirviss Gallery, Beijing-based gallery INK Studio will be showing recent work by Bingyi in “Land of Immortals.” The exhibition will be held alongside Joan B. Mirviss’s presentation of Kondō Takahiro’s work on E. 78th Street, bringing together the traditions of Chinese ink painting and Japanese ceramics in one exhibition space. Bingyi’s scroll paintings were inspired by her travels to the Taihang Mountains in Northern China’s Eastern Yellow-River Loess. The region was home to three ink masters of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) who were instrumental in defining China’s monumental landscape painting tradition: Fan Kuan (c.960-c.1030), Guo Xi (c.1020-c.1090), and Li Tang (c.1050-1130). By capturing the same landscape that her predecessors exalted hundreds of years later, Bingyi reinterprets the stunning Chinese wilderness through her process. Her work is also a reminder of an ancient tradition of reverence for both natural and internal environments. The exhibition will be on view for the run of Asia Week.
