Japanese artist Yui Suzuki moves between painting and ceramics, layering different times and points of view onto a single surface. Suzuki regards a painting not as a flat plane but as “a window through which one can pass back and forth.” In recent years, the artist has extended this painterly structure into the three-dimensional form of the vessel. For Suzuki, a vessel is not a tool for containing something but a boundary dividing inside from outside; on its surface, front and back, interior and exterior, appear at once.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Suzuki studied oil painting and printmaking at the graduate school of the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. After moving to Shigaraki, a region with a long ceramic tradition, and encountering clay there, the artist expanded the questions of space and viewpoint explored in painting into three-dimensional form. Suzuki has held solo exhibitions at mizusai in Tokyo and Paris and at Mitsukoshi Contemporary Gallery in Tokyo, and has participated in group exhibitions at the Shiga Museum of Art and other venues. In 2011 and 2013, the artist was in residence at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The work begins without a fixed image of completion. Setting only a single starting point and a few simple rules, Suzuki allows the form to unfold through the act of making itself. The ceramics are hand-built\u2014without a wheel\u2014from clay dug in Shigaraki. Suzuki coats the formed vessel with slip (liquid clay), incises the surface, and then turns the piece while painting across its entire exterior. In painting, too, the artist works not only with brushes but with fingers and oil bars, placing paint directly onto the surface rather than spreading it thin.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The way Suzuki titles works speaks to this working attitude. A title is rarely fixed from the outset. While a work is underway, a nickname arises naturally in passing remarks to family or those nearby\u2014”Could you move that ___ painting?”\u2014and from this starting point the artist refines the title, weighing the sound and rhythm of the Japanese and the visual shape of the characters. At times Suzuki draws on Zen Buddhist terms or archaic Japanese\u2014not out of fondness for the words themselves, but because they suit the “ambiguous boundaries and overlapping states” at the center of the artist’s concerns. For Suzuki, a title is not a hidden message but the language that most naturally reflects the state of the work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At this year’s Kiaf, Yui Suzuki presents the painting Backyard Utsutsu alongside a ceramic work of the same title, together with a series of vessels wrapped entirely in imagery, including Fish in the Vessel and Old hunting map Vessel. Paintings and ceramics are dispersed throughout the booth so that the relationships among the works shift each time viewers change position. The reclining figure and checkered rug of the painting continue onto the ceramics, wrapping around the shoulder and body of the vessels. The artist hopes visitors will take away “a sense that reality may not be as fixed as it appears.” Standing before a painting, the viewer may suddenly feel as if looking from the other side\u2014an unfamiliar sensation of reversal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62446","highlight","type-highlight","status-publish","hentry"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"en","enabled_languages":["ko","en"],"languages":{"ko":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"acf":{"\bshow_only_admin":false,"thumbnail":62473,"gallery":"Mizusai","hide_han":false,"hide_eng":false,"artworks":[{"artwork_img":62527,"artwork_desc":"2026Artwork4_ceramics_image_yuisuzuki"},{"artwork_img":62528,"artwork_desc":"Attempting the impossible Vessel, Ceramic, h460\u03c6510mm, 2026"},{"artwork_img":62529,"artwork_desc":"Backyard Utsutsu, Oil on canvas, 100\u00d780.3 cm, 2026"},{"artwork_img":62530,"artwork_desc":"Vessel Garden, Ceramic, 580\u03c6555 mm, 2026"}],"category":[111]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/highlight\/62446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/highlight"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/highlight"}],"acf:term":[{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"category","href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kiaf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}