ART CITIES:Rome-Shio Kusaka

Growing up in Japan, Shio Kusaka had little interest in art. But her grandmother led traditional tea ceremonies, and those rituals helped guide Kusaka, many years later, toward making ceramics. “After being served, you spend time observing-the cup, the spoon, This taught me to stop and look.” explains the artist.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Gallery

It wasn’t until after studying accounting in California and living for in Colorado that Shio Kusaka tried pottery. She went on to get a BFA at the University of Washington, where she toyed with an array of different media, finally returning to clay while assisting Charles Ray. While Kusaka’s exhibitions typically feature a combination of abstraction and representation, in her first  solo exhibition in Italy at Gagosian Gallery, the artist focus exclusively on her abstract work. The ceramics, variations on the form of the vase, are drawn and etched with continuous, geodesic lines, a process that is simultaneously systematic and intuitive. Minimalist repetitions stretch across the round volumes, echoing the grids of Agnes Martin, or the instruction-based wall drawings of Sol LeWitt, which also embrace the irregularities of the hand-drawn line, creating sinuous, oscillating terrains. Her largest vessels to date, displayed on a long, curved wooden pedestal, are glazed in cool, muted tones, from pale blue, pink, or yellow to a tranquil off-white, and the thick liquid stops above the base of each: a necessary precaution when kiln-firing, and a subtle reminder of the alchemical transformations inherent to the medium. In a selection of smaller pots, Kusaka repeats many of the etched patterns as pencil drawings on a white ground, creating more intimate, sketch-like echoes of the large works. She thus restates the process-based techniques of the Minimalists, while also underscoring the infinite potential of form itself: from large to small, liquid to solid, two to three dimensions. Throughout her oeuvre, Kusaka has infused the subtleties of the ceramic medium with playful details and subject matter, from basketballs and fruit, to dinosaurs, raindrops, and wood grain. Her geometric works, however, offer a more direct view of her technical mastery, as she discovers the infinite permutations that can result from adhering to a single process and approach. In previous abstract works, Kusaka often “ended” a line or grid pattern once it became distorted by the curvature of the pot, producing fragmented, interlocking patterns. In these new works, she takes an almost topographic approach, expanding the responsive tactility necessary for wheel-throwing by carving, or drawing, intricate lines along the surfaces of each pot. Allowing the three-dimensionality of each vessel to determine the concentric curves of the lines, Kusaka unites the primary creative acts of drawing and sculpting. While some lines appear straight and parallel, others resemble waveforms and schematic topographies.

Info: Gagosian Gallery, Via Francesco Crispi 16, Rome, Duration: 28/3-26/5/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:30-19:00, www.gagosian.com