Forms of Becoming

WKM Gallery is pleased to present Forms of Becoming, an exhibition of Japanese ceramics featuring artists Osamu Inayoshi, Takumi Morozumi, Tomohisa Obana, and Tomoko Obana. All based in regions with long ceramic traditions, these four artists draw on inherited customs not as a rulebook but as a point of departure, approaching clay through a contemporary lens and using it as a foundation for personal expression and conceptual exploration.

Ceramics in Japan have long existed at the intersection of utility and aesthetic philosophy. Many central values of the culture are reflected in the craft: a deep reverence for nature, an appreciation of imperfection and ambiguity, and respect for the humble beauty within simple forms. From this core, distinct identities arose across geographies in response to local clay and firing environments.

The exhibition navigates a veritable map of Japan's ceramic heritage, with each artist engaging with the history of their respective region: Morozumi is based in Shigaraki, one of Japan’s most famous ceramic centers; Tomohisa Obana and Tomoko Obana in Iga, home to the ancient Igayaki pottery tradition; and Inayoshi in the Atsumi peninsula, birthplace of Atsumiyaki stoneware. These regional differences shape each artist’s practice, the form and finish of their works influenced by different types of clay, firewood and kilns. Yet each artist puts their own contemporary spin on these traditions, incorporating their own subjective emotions, identities, and interpretations.

Shigaraki, located in Shiga Prefecture, is one of Japan’s most well-known kiln sites, renowned for its rough, mineral-rich clay and natural ash glazes. From this environment comes Takumi Morozumi. Having grown up across several countries, Morozumi views clay as a bridge to his roots and a medium for expressing the essence of home. His works reflect a combination of his experience abroad in places such as Oslo, New York, Beijing, and Taipei, in addition to his current practice in Shigaraki. By embracing unpredictability and imperfection as a symbolic extension of personal identity, Morozumi repositions Japanese ceramics as an evolving category shaped as much by contemporary identity as by tradition.

In the neighboring city of Iga, the unique clay of Japan’s oldest lake, Lake Biwa, allowed the area to precede Shigaraki as a center of ceramics. With a history stretching back 1,200 years, it is a ceramic tradition associated with rustic beauty and durability, qualities that inform the work of Tomoko Obana and Tomohisa Obana.

Tomoko Obana casts solid molds from industrially produced bottles and vases, firing them with various woods to achieve ashen gradient surfaces. These non-functional replicas are then grouped into highly calibrated arrangements, recalling the spatial discipline of ikebana and karesansui gardens. The bottles become almost architectural, disconnecting their relation to human use and turning into timeless constellations. Meanwhile, Tomohisa Obana’s precariously stacked plates and sealed vessels similarly reject utility. Freed of functionality, his works explore the beauty that lies within ambiguity, instability, and purposelessness.

Further south, Aichi Prefecture’s Atsumiyaki tradition informs the practice of Osamu Inayoshi. Catalyzed by his discomfort with the mass-produced, machine-made urn that became the final resting place for his grandfather, Inayoshi dedicated himself to becoming a ceramicist. In the process, he learned of the ceramic tradition of his own birthplace, and eventually even attempted to recreate an ancient Atsumiyaki kiln from the 12th and 13th centuries based on archaeological ruins. Rejecting the impersonal nature of factory production and the fast pace of information society, Inayoshi’s diverse practice combines his ongoing research into Atsumiyaki with his training at the Minoyaki kilns in Gifu Prefecture, placing value on ancient wisdom, local culture, and the power of the earth’s abundance.

Together, these artists represent a generational shift in Japanese ceramics, adding to the growing global discourse that challenges the hierarchies between craft and art. While each artist’s approach diverges in form and tone, they share a common interest in balancing tradition with transformation. Through their practices, the old paves a path toward the new, showing how ceramic lineage can evolve in response to the complexities of contemporary identity. Forms of Becoming turns vessels of function into vessels of thought, and proposes that ceramic traditions are in fact active systems: evolving vocabularies through which past memory and present consciousness continue to be discovered.

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