Event
Date:2023.6.24 (Sat.) ー 2023.8.19 (Sat.)
Hours: Tue – Sat PM1:00-PM6:00
Closed:Sundays, Mondays and National Holidays
7/14-15・8/11-12
Admission: free
Venue
COHJU contemporary art
http://www.cohju.co.jp/
Access:1F COHJU Bldg., 557 Bisyamon-cho, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto 604-0981
Tel: 075-256-4707
Overview
COHJU contemporary art is pleased to present Koji Shiraya’s solo exhibition, “To keep moving, you must keep your balance.” from June 24 to August 19, 2023.
Koji Shiraya was born in 1980 in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, London (ceramics and glass) in 2010, and currently lives and works in his native Hyogo.
Shiraya creates ceramic works that pursue the chemistry between artificial practices and the power of nature. His signature series includes “Trinary”, which is made by firing a mixture of silica (SiO₂), alumina (Al₂O₃), and lime (CaO), the main components of the earth’s crust, in different proportions to present various aspects of material changes due to differences in their melting points. The other is “After the dream”, which is the installation work series with countless white spheres made of porcelain clay at Bath Abbey in England and an former elementary school in Japan, expresses the endless cycle of life in the long history and the shape of hearts within a community.
In this exhibition, Shiraya will show new series “White Square” as well as his two other signature sereries “After the rain”; an attempt to record the traces of interaction among water, rain and substances from the “Trinary”, and “The world”; a work in which the fluid form of the glaze is held in place by controlling the material and the heat.
The new “White square” series captures the appearance of densely arranged grains of different sizes melting together and bonding to form a single plate through the firing process. The way in which the grains melt and bond together varies according to their composition, size, firing temperature, and spacing, expressing the relationship between the individual and the collective, the beauty and loss of melting, and the equilibrium between them.
