Harmonious Conflict

Yuta Segawa, born 1988 in Shizuoka (Japan), is a Japanese ceramic artist who specialises in creating elegant micro-pottery that is at once contemporary and traditional. He mastered his craft on an academic journey that took him through many major and well renown ceramic institutions. The exquisite miniatures on display at Sunny Art Centre during this exhibition will constitute a major achievement for the artist as well as a huge inspiration for those who examine his process.

The hundreds of micro-pots here on display are made of more than one thousand original glazes created by Segawa. Clay and stoneware play a significant role in his creations as the main cornerstones of Yuta's necessity of ambient expression. In fact, this ambient expression is a direct result of the methods that Segawadeploys so as to create the pots themselves. In particular, there is a close relationship between the body of the artist and the richly evolving form of the artwork which is directly shaped by the former. It is the friction that arises upon the contact of these two material surfaces that brings forth this aforementioned (and unique) ambience.

Each one of these pots is individually thrown by hand using a traditional spinning wheel and the artist's own innovative contemporary process. The juxtaposition between the dirty, violent and radically direct process of creation and the harmonious, tranquil and controlled final products and their installation is where the heart of Segawa's artistry really lies. In the intersection of process art and ceramics — a harmonious conflict.