WKM Gallery is pleased to present Stillness, a solo exhibition by Osaka-based ceramicist Junsuke Inatomi. Stillness brings together a new series of ceramic works that continue Inatomi’s introspective exploration of beauty. Characterized by minimal, cylindrical shapes and soft white surfaces, Inatomi’s works utilize restraint as a form of expressiveness, relaying a profound Japanese understanding of the aesthetic experience; one that offers space for silence, pause, and reflection.
Using clay from Shigaraki, an area in southern Japan renowned for its history as a center for ceramics, Inatomi creates his works through a meticulous and time-consuming process in which he coats the ceramics in thin layers of white clay slip and fires them multiple times. This process allows for a pristine matte white finish that gives the works a soft glow that seems both angelic and ghostly in turns, imbuing them with an unearthly atmosphere. Yet, upon closer inspection, one will find that the vessels hold the warmth of the artist’s touch in the form of fingerprints and slight asymmetries. The smooth white surface humbly reveals traces of the human hand, allowing light to illuminate them at will.
Within this delicate balance is Inatomi’s pursuit of beauty, a pursuit that humans have strived towards for centuries, yet one that will never have an answer. The artist has suggested that his tireless journey towards this unattainable concept made up of constantly shifting ideals may perhaps be the end goal in itself. The ceramics, which are both ethereal in their fragility and humble in their imperfections, hover in an ambiguous zone that reflects the long history of Japanese aesthetics they are born out of. Author Junichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows describes the Japanese preference for transience over finality as being expressed through an appreciation of shadow and light’s natural fluctuations. Inatomi’s ceramics express precisely this idea, allowing his works to interact with the light of their environment, inviting an attentiveness that is more atmospheric than analytical. Where Western aesthetics might seek definition, these works align with the Japanese concept of yūgen, which finds beauty within subtlety, mystery, and the depth of what cannot be fully expressed or understood. These vessels are not declarations of intent or demands for attention, but soft suggestions that create space, or ma, for the viewer to pause and feel. Inatomi’s expressions of beauty also align with those of philosopher Soetsu Yanagi, who, in his writing on folk craft, argues that true beauty is not fabricated but arises naturally in an “unselfconscious” way. A thread of this ethos can be found in Inatomi’s work, where part of its beauty emerges from the sincere, simple directness of form and the honest utilitarian function still retained within the vases, jars, and containers.
Elegantly imperfect, Inatomi’s ceramics glide between light and shadow, presence and absence, embodying a journey that becomes its own destination. In doing so, Inatomi reaffirms that the search itself may be the most honest expression of beauty we have.
Yūgen (幽玄)
Yūgen is one of the fundamental aesthetic philosophies of Japanese culture found across various artistic fields such as literature, painting, performing arts, and architecture. Originally a term used in the field of Chinese thought, such as Buddhism and Laozhuang philosophy, it became a central term in poetry criticism after it was widely used by Fujiwara Toshinari, a representative poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods who compiled the Senjoku Wakashu (collection of waka poems), as a critical term for waka poetry. Since then, it has continued to influence Japanese art and culture since the medieval and early modern periods, including Noh drama, Zen, renga, tea ceremony, and haikai.
Ma (間)
In Japanese, the word ma, meaning space, pause, or interval, is described as a simultaneous perception of form and non-form that derives from the enhancement of vision. Ma is not created by its constituent elements, but rather is perceived in the imagination of the human being who experiences these elements. It can be defined as "an emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled," and "the silence ‘between’ the sounds that make music."
