TOKYO.- Fergus McCaffrey Tokyo presents its first exhibition with the renowned Spanish artist Miquel Barceló (b. 1957). The exhibition Shigaraki Ceramics features fourteen works produced in 2023 in collaboration with ceramic artist Kazuya Furutani (b. 1976).

Barceló’s work exhibits a raw and rugged expression that captures the immediacy of gesture, addressing timeless and universal human concerns with the cycle of life, the wonder of nature, the presence of myth, and the meaning of human existence. Travelling extensively in Africa and Asia since his youth, he has studied and learned from ancient traditions such as Dogon in Mali and Jomon in Japan; with this knowledge, he has established his unique style in painting, ceramic, and sculpture which demonstrates a rugged authority and materiality. Plugging into a deep vein of human emotion and consciousness, Barceló’s expressive force and transcendent form have married ancient techniques with the tactile directness of Jean Dubuffet, Yves Klein, and Lucio Fontana.

Given Barceló’s intense and prolific production of ceramics, an encounter with the rich traditions of Japanese pottery was a natural extension of his practice, and a post-pandemic meeting with the renowned Shigaraki potter Kazuya Furutani opened the door to Barceló’s engagement with that 800-year-old ceramic tradition. Working together in the studio, Furutani and Barceló executed more than 40 hand-coiled vessels and flat panel works in which Furutani would provide traditional Shigaraki forms for Barceló to transform before the clay dried or became too brittle.

Barceló’s primordial and organic images of the deep sea and earth, of arid deserts from Africa and the rocky landscape and underwater marine universe of the Balearic Islands, resonate with history, literature, poetry, myth, and music. His dramatic improvisations saw him twist protruding crabs out of the soft clay, incise insects deep into the surface, and set free springing fish; all were then subject to the unpredictable alchemical transformation of traditional Shigaraki firing, overseen by Furutani. That process was heavily influenced by the weather, as well as the placement of firewood, in the Anagama kiln built by the ceramicist himself. Over four days at temperatures of 1,300 degrees, under continual supervision by Furutani, the rich texture and colorings of Shigaraki ceramics organically emerged.