Reception with Yasuhisa Kohyama

When
06 Jun 2014
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
Lacoste Gallery 25 Main Street Concord, MA 01742

Cocktail Reception with Yasuhisa Kohyama

and New Works on view

Friday, June 6, 2014
5:30 – 7:30 pm

Lacoste Gallery
25 Main Street
Concord, MA 01742

RSVP to
info@lacostegallery.com or 978-369-0278

Artist Biography:

Yasuhisa Kohyama was born in 1936 in Shigaraki, a historically vital ceramics production center in Japan. Kohyama was fifteen years old when he became employed by one of the largest ceramic factories in Sigaraki, Oumi Kagaku Touki. From 1958 until 1960, he took evening classes at Vocational Training School, where he was taught basic techniques such as glazing and throwing on a potter's wheel. A well-known ceramic designer, Sakuzo Hineno, visiting the factory in 1955 while he was working under a government scheme to improve the quality and originality of the ceramic arts in Japan. Later, Kohyama apprenticed with Hineno, specializing in tableware.

In the early 1960's, Kohyama worked closely with designers, architects and contractors on important projects such as a tile installation for the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo in 1964. He established his first studio in 1973 where he experimented and developed his cutting techniques. Later that year, he exhibited at the Mitsukoshi store, attended by respected ceramicist Shoji Hamada among others. In addition to reviving the use of the traditional Japanese Anagama wood fired kiln, his is also a contemporary master of the ancient practice of Sueki, a method that originated in Southern China, which accounts for his unglazed yet glassy surface textures. A collection of texts on the artist and his work can be found in the book “Yasuhisa Kohyama: The Art of Ceramics”

Kohyama's work is collected internationally and exhibited widely in Japan and overseas. His work is included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as several museums throughout the Netherlands and Germany. Currently, his work can be viewed at the Museum of Fine Arts - Boston in the exhibition, “Fired Earth, Woven Bamboo: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics and Bamboo Art." His work is represented locally by Lacoste Gallery in Concord, MA.

THE JAPAN SOCIETY OF BOSTON