Gallery | Nao Masaki

vol.140

Junpei Omori

Inside and Outside and the Between

2022.9.3 Sat - 9.18 Sun

Open : 13:00 - 19:00

Closed : Tue, Wed

Artist will be in the Gallery: 9.3,4, 10, 11, 17, 18

The process to the Jomon　

　Jomon pottery was the identity and symbol of its time. Their existence said it all. It was a prayer and a tool for living and for life. The earthenware, which was directly connected to life, contained all the elements in its design. Persistence, life and death, man and woman, the existence of all living things, fear and creation. Although it was a still life, we could see constant movement and change in it. Ancient people must have known that the soil itself was alive. It was not just a material, but life itself. It is not difficult to imagine that those who could handle the magic of change through the addition of fire must have been shamanic beings.

　The artist Junpei Omori is someone who has been instinctively attracted to such magic. He adds his outstanding sensitivity to colour and form to his work, and creates his own kind of magic in the modern age. He reacts to the wonder of the magic, enjoying it more than anything else himself. I believe that his own experiences of life and death have led him to another level of expression, and I secretly feel that this is also a process of reinterpreting the Jomon.

Gallery NAO MASAKI

Nao Masaki

'Colour in the gaps where the shape has shifted. If you only extract the colour it becomes a plane."

　I looked back on what I have done. My father was an architect and from a young age I saw how three-dimensional objects were created from precise flat drawings on paper, and gradually I became attracted to the opposite of architecture, which comes from a world with no deviations.

　I chose clay materials vaguely, something born from my hands. I wanted to make three-dimensional works and longed for the craftsmanship that was being lost, so I started to work with pottery at university. I wanted to make something that was light despite being made of clay, something that went against the material, so I made about 150 spheres and randomly divided shapes out of the air that were inspired by floating objects, creating spheres in space, that kind of thing. I always had this desire to make some kind of change, some kind of magic, even though the material was chosen by me.

　I was attracted to Japanese primitive practices, and I had been doing wild firing for about nine years, black pottery, where pine leaves are put in the process to make it black, and the shapes became simpler because the polishing technique of black pottery does not make the shapes more complex.

　As I continued to make simple, abstracted objects with black pottery, I began to turn my attention to a completely different approach. It was during this period of interest in more complex objects from ancient Japan that I first saw Jomon earthenware in the collection of a local museum (the former Aichi Ceramic Museum). I still remember the shock of seeing such things. Somewhere along the line, I became interested in making my own Jomon forms.

　When I made Jomon pottery with a vivid red pigment from America, which I had never seen before, I felt as if I were using a different material. The Jomon earthenware I made with bright red, blue, yellow and other primary colours from the kiln using pigments had a strong impact on me. From 2010 to 2019, I made a series of Jomon earthenware. I think that what is created in the process of shaping the Jomon form into a spiral by hand is actually the inside of the cavity. I realised that what you see is outside, but I am actually conscious of what is inside.

　A few years ago, when I found cancer in my body, I went back and forth between life and death and became aware of the concept of “between". Now I am a survivor, but the between of life and death still exists. Pottery is also a phenomenon that exists because it is made from the between of earth and heat. Things are just things with things on them, but we are aware of what is on that between. The same goes for the relationship between people.

　This time, between is expressed in terms of colour and shape. If you put colour in a form that is out of place, and extract only the colour, it becomes a flat surface. I feel that it is interesting, as if a mysterious magic trick has been performed again.Junpei Omori