Matsutani Fumio (b. 1975) has achieved a laborious and time-intensive artistic process that creates a beautifully textured vessel. Matsutani applied 5 layers of glaze over his clay before hand-incising lines...
Matsutani Fumio (b. 1975) has achieved a laborious and time-intensive artistic process that creates a beautifully textured vessel. Matsutani applied 5 layers of glaze over his clay before hand-incising lines carefully over the blue and white glazed surface to create a velvety texture on the monochromatic surface. Because he lives in Shikoku, where the weather is both dry and slightly humid and extremely cold in the winter, he lets the clay dry naturally overtime instead of firing, as firing his layered glazes would crack the clay. Therefore, his works take months at a time to complete, with particularly lengthy drying times during the winter seasons. A rising star in the ceramic landscape, Matsutani has won many awards in a competitive Japanese ceramic society.
This vessel's angular verticality delicately resembles the balanced poise of butterfly wings. Characteristic of his "Sou" series, Matsutani examines the utility of the infamous ultramarine pigment, recalling the blues of Yves Klein ("Yves Klein Blue") in the Western Canon. Here, depth, scale, weight, surface texture, height, and balance are key features to his formal enquiry into color as form.