KOGEI + ART

“KOGEI” refers to works made using materials and methods that have stood the test of time, reflecting uncompromising dedication to technical perfection and a search for new forms of expression. Our Asia Week show is focused on three leading categories of KOGEI, highlighting its growing role in contemporary Western lifestyle and global art and design. We chose the title KOGEI and Art to reflect the unique character of KOGEI, not seen in other cultures, and to emphasize its separate but complementary status alongside “Art” in the conventional Western sense.

 

Our first category is Metalwork, including works by artists whose works were shown in Japan: A History of Style (2021) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and subsequently acquired by the Museum, or are currently on display in Striking Objects: Contemporary Japanese Metalwork at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, comprising masterpieces from the Shirley Z. Johnson Bequest.

 

The second category is Lacquerware by artists who participated in The Spirit of Noto: Urushi Artists of Wajima , held at Onishi Gallery in October 2024 and highlighting leading figures from a region whose tradition of lacquer production dates back more than five centuries.

 

The third category is Ceramics, an aspect of KOGEI that Onishi Gallery has foregrounded ever since its opening in 2005.

 

The show includes works by numerous Living National Treasures of Japan such as Ōsumi Yukie, Nakagawa Mamoru, Katsura Morihito, Tamagawa Norio, Murose Kazumi, Yamagishi Kazuo, Imaizumi Imaemon XIV, and Yoshita Minori as well as younger artists including Onihira Keiji, Noguchi Ken, Rusu Aki, and Konno Tomoko, creating a lively intergenerational dialogue within Onishi Gallery’s historical space in the Sidney Ripley mansion, built in 1905 and designed by Warren and Wetmore in Neo-Georgian style. We are also delighted to premiere a new jewelry artist, George Inaki Root, whose practice is based on kintsugi , the Japanese philosophy of “mended, not broken."

 

Onishi Gallery is presenting an annex exhibition with the same title and dates at Bergdorf Goodman, on the 7th Floor. KOGEI + Art supports the mission of KOGEI USA, a new not-for-profit 501 (c)(3) established with the goal of raising the reputation of Japanese traditional arts and culture outside Japan by holding exhibitions and cultural events at major museums in the US and Europe in

association with Japan Kogei Association.