Wave

Kondō Takahiro is an innovative ceramicist descended from a line of well-known Japanese potters. This monolith form proposed for acquisition is created from marbleized (‘neriage’) slabs of porcelain and cast glass. The theme of “Wave” is water, swirling beautifully throughout the porcelain and menacingly within the glass—a topic that has influenced Kondō’s work over the last few years. This body of work is motivated by the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan’s Tōhoku region. “Wave” features Kondo’s signature overglaze, ‘gintekisai’ (silver mist), which contains gold, silver, and platinum along with glass frit. The glaze beads up on the ceramic form to create glinting droplets across its surface, resembling morning dew. Echoing the shape of these tiny beads are air bubbles within the cast glass. The artist states that his work represents ‘utsuroi no bigaku’—the art of impermanence: “It is my intent to evoke that beauty found in the ephemeral through the waves and droplets on my surfaces that represent the cycle of nature, purification and rebirth.” In 2003, Kondō took a year-long break to return to study glass at the Edinburgh College of Art, subsequently incorporating cast glass into his ceramics (as with “Wave”). While there, he visited the Orkney Islands and photographed the Neolithic standing stones erected there. These monuments have inspired him to work in the form of the monolith.