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Onishi Gallery To Participate in Salon Art + Design 2024 and 

Present Japanese KOGEI Exhibition

Onishi Gallery, specializing in KOGEI (contemporary craft art from Japan), is proud to partner once again this year with Salon Art + Design, the leading New York contemporary design fair to be held at the Park Avenue Armory from November 7 to 11.

 In addition to our booth at the Armory, Onishi Gallery will present an exhibition at our new Upper East Side Gallery. Featuring work by six leading artists working in a range of traditional media, KOGEI and Art will run from November 8 until December 20.

Held in collaboration with the Wajima Lacquer in New York Executive Committee, the exhibitions will assist earthquake recovery efforts in the Noto Peninsula, a historic center of high-quality lacquer production. Opening on October 1 and remaining on view through October 25, they will also inaugurate Onishi Gallery’s new 1,200-square-foot Upper East Side location in the historic Sidney Ripley mansion, built in 1905 and designed by Warren and Wetmore in Neo-Georgian style.

Bringing colors in Kogei has been an exciting theme for Kogei artists as the materials they use are from nature and are already gifted with a variety of colors from the Earth. Invention plays a key role for some artists who strive to incorporate color in new ways while maintaining their works’ traditional values. Included in this exhibition are two porcelain pieces in vivid blue by Tokuda Yasokichi III who was a Living National Treasure and the most well-known Kutani ware artist of his time. In these pieces the suffusion of colors is achieved by his inventive coloration of vivid Kutani color glaze. In another piece where a famed Kogei artist works with blue, the amost transparent and greenish blue on his signature Hakuji porcelain represents a signal departure for Inoue Manji. Manji’s introduction of colors in his work wasn’t until later in his career, after having spent decades working in stark white. Another attractive blue color is by Suzuki Miki in his famous Blue Bizen ware. Unlike traditional Bizen in brown, Suzuki creates a new impression in this traditional stoneware by shifting to blue.

Originally coined to translate the word “craft,” today the term KOGEI has a higher significance, denoting works that, even at their most innovative, use materials and methods that have stood the test of time and reflect an unrivalled dedication to technical perfection and refinement, from generation to generation over many centuries.

The two artists’ practices convey contrasting aspects of Japanese visual expression. Inoue Manji—a “Living National Treasure” and the embodiment of his country’s dedication to traditional philosophies, materials, and techniques—uses the purity of hakuji (white porcelain) to create works that offer a new perspective on Japanese minimalism. David Stanley Hewett, an American living in Japan, works in the medium of finest Japanese gold leaf applied to canvas or wood, preserving and re-imagining a heritage of gorgeous decoration with its roots in elite samurai culture. 

Onishi Gallery is proud to present its Asia Week New York Autumn Exhibition “ONKO CHISHIN” featuring work by Murose Kazumi, Japan’s leading master of lacquer art, named a “Living National Treasure” in 2008.