Sueharu Fukami (深見陶治 , born 1947) is a Japanese ceramic artist and sculptor known for his work in pale-blue qinbai porcelain (also referred to as Sei Hakuji / Celadon). Fukami's abstracted, sculptural ceramic works depart from the traditional Japanese artisan traditions of his upbringing and instead explore natural phenomena and universal senses like "infinite space" through sharp silhouettes, sweeping curves, architecturally-inspired arches, and delicately-colored glaze. His minimalist approach to porcelains has contributed to defining and expanding the meaning, importance, and popularity of contemporary Japanese ceramics beyond craft art circles, most notably to fine art collectors and museums globally.Aoyama, Wahei. TEFAF 2022. Tokyo: A Lighthouse Called Kanata, 2022
Biography Fukami was born in the Sennyu-ji temple area in Higashiyama, the eastern mountains of Kyoto, Japan. Higashiyama is a traditional center of the city's renowned ceramic industry and highly populated with potters' workshops and ceramicists.Maezaki, Shinya. “Fukami Sueharu: Ceramic Sculptor.” Ceramics: Art & Perception, no. 63 (2006) He was born the sixth child after two boys and three girls, and was surrounded by a vibrant local ceramics community as a child. His father, Yoshiichi Fukami, came from a village of potters near the ancient ceramic city of Seto, in today's Aichi Prefecture. To escape the competition of the Seto community, his father moved to Kyoto in its boom years before World War II, training in a ceramic workshop before establishing his own kiln, Fukami Ryōsen, which specialized in Fukusuke figures: ceramic figurines often placed in storefronts and merchants shops for good fortune.Thomsen, Hans Bjarne. "Sueharu Fukami: Visions from the Shards of Sennyūji." In Sueharu Fukami 深見陶治, 1947-1993. Exh. cat. New York: Erik Thomsen LLC Asian Art, 2008 Later, Fukami's father and elder brothers Takehisa and Naokatsu reinvented the family business to focus on fine, hand-painted porcelain vessels for kaiseki food ceremonies. Their handling of the family firm allowed Fukami to focus on developing a personal style out of experiments with numerous ceramic object types.
Education and professional activity Fukami studied ceramics at Kyoto Arts and Crafts Training Centre and graduated at age eighteen in 1965. His early work consisted mainly of stoneware. Following graduation, at age twenty Fukami worked with the family firm before being encouraged by a friend to enter into an art competition.Maezaki, Shinya. “Beyond the Ocean's Horizon: The Work of Fukami Sueharu.” Orientations 36, no. 2 (2005): 101. Fukami subsequently submitted of one of his porcelain works to the prestigious Nitten Exhibition (The Japan Fine Arts Exhibition), one of Japan's largest art competitions. Its acceptance and inclusion in the prestigious venue allowed him to earn early notoriety as an artist and commit fully to a career as a professional ceramicist. Fukami began concentrating on qingbai glaze in 1975 and developed his signature high-pressure slip-casting technique in 1980. His initial success was not immediately followed by further recognition, however, leading him to reinvent his work and style several times before finding his acclaimed signature style. In 1975, Fukami married his wife Chieko Takahashi, a fellow ceramic artist, who scholars suggest aided him in finding his working technique."Artist Biography." Sueharu Fukami 深見陶治, 1947-1993. Exh. cat. New York: Erik Thomsen LLC Asian Art (2008), 64.
Fukami's ceramic sculptures were introduced outside of Japan for the first time when he won Grand Prix for the 43rd Premio Faenza in 1985. Fukami became the third Japanese ceramicist ever to win this internationally acclaimed annual ceramic art competition held in Faenza, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. This achievement was followed by a successful solo exhibition tour in Europe in 1986 as the winner of the previous year's competition. In 2005, Fukami was invited to show again in Faenza, this time as a solo show featuring 25 prize-winning works to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of his international career.Maezaki, Shinya. “Fukami Sueharu: Ceramic Sculptor.” In Ceramics: Art & Perception, no. 63 (2006)
This came on the heels of Fukami's major retrospective of early works at the Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese Art at the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, California in 2002. In 2002, American collector and founder of the Lee Institute, Willard G. Clark, visited Fukami's Kyoto studio and acquired forty early works for the Institute as promised gifts. One of these pieces was Haruka na Umi (Distant Ocean), a prize-winning ceramic sculpture from the 1976 Japan Contemporary Arts and Crafts Exhibition. The Lee Institute's 2002 exhibition featured three prize-winning works from the 1985 Premio Faenza, including this newly acquired Haruka no kakei (Distant Seascape), as well as Kaze no kaikei (Seascape of Wind) and Kyoko no omoi (Pure Thought). After several later additional acquisitions, the Clark now holds 52 pieces and constitutes the largest and most representative collection of Fukami's works to date.
Fukami's 1.2-meter-wide horizontal sculpture titled Shinsho II (Infinity II), held by the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York is one of the best examples of his work from the 1990s. It is installed as a permanent installation at the Museum that Asian Art Curator and Chair Amy Poster notes is one of the most popular works of art in the Brooklyn Museum's Japanese gallery.
Work Early Work
Early in his career, Fukami's work took on a range of expression and experimentation. The period of Fukami's twenties was marked by social unrest in Japan between fierce student protests, the Vietnam War, and the hippie movement. During this time, the leading popular art forms included Abstract Expressionism and rock music. Responding to these instabilities, some of Fukami's early works took on overt political messaging, such as his 1973 piece Jōhō ni maibotsu sareta watashi (The Artist, Buried in Information), a cylindrical vessel with a small seated figure in the center. The form of the work was meant to represent the artist buried under the weight of information in the form of jumbled printed matter bearing down on all sides.Thomsen, Hans Bjarne. "Sueharu Fukami: Visions from the Shards of Sennyūji." InSueharu Fukami 深見陶治, 1947-1993. Exh. cat. New York: Erik Thomsen LLC Asian Art, 2008 Another one of Fukami's noted early works from 1974 is a large, hand-built stoneware sculpture in irabo (brown ash) glaze titled Wakakihi no Rinri (Morals of a Young Day) whose top represents a national flag while its body signifies the masses oppressed by national ideology.Maezaki, Shinya. “Beyond the Ocean's Horizon: The Work of Fukami Sueharu.” Orientations 36, no. 2 (2005): 103. His 1972 work Ehon no yume (The Dream of the Picture Book) took a poetic, whimsical form: a pottery book opened to reveal a blue-and-white porcelain balloon on which Fukami invited his young niece to draw pictures of popular anime characters. Through the artist's early technical experimentation he sought to create works that had universality and permanence of vision.
Technique
Since 1975, Fukami's work has focused exclusively on perfecting qinbai (Seihakuji in Japanese) porcelain. Determined to master the tradition, the artist made a personal pact. As he states: "When I started high-pressure slip casting, I promised myself that I would immerse myself thoroughly in tracking down my true self in this porcelain and qingbai glaze. And that I wouldn’t flip-flop and go back to stoneware. If I ran into a wall, then I’d run into it. If I couldn’t break down that wall, then that was my own problem, and maybe I should give up, knowing that it was only due to deficiencies in my own talent. So I decided with conviction and determination, to stick with this medium when I was 33 years old."Maezaki, Shinya. "Fukami Sueharu Now: From 2:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., July 10th, 2014." In Sueharu Fukami. Exh. cat. New York: Erik Thomsen LLC Asian Art, 2014 Five years after committing to qinbai glaze, Fukami developed his unique high-pressure slip-casting technique, which involves the pressurized injection of liquid clay into specially-made plaster molds, condensed to remove air pockets and impurities. The molds are produced with semi-porcelain and covered in plaster, often created in pieces and fitted together to assemble the final sculptural form. After bisque-firing in an electric kiln, the work is sprayed with the celadon glaze, and then reduction-fired in a gas kiln for approximately 30 hours. Once the mold is removed, the work is dried completely. Fukami then uses a Tungaloy alloy blade and sandpaper to sharpen the form and hone the clay's finer details.Maezaki, Shinya. "Fukami Sueharu Now: From 2:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., July 10th, 2014." In Sueharu Fukami. Exh. cat. New York: Erik Thomsen LLC Asian Art, 2014 Fukami aims to create about eight pieces per individual mold, sometimes over the span of several years, with some pieces taking from three months to a year to complete. With this process, Fukami is typically able to produce only 6 to 8 sculptures per year. Despite the use of molding, Fukami states that shaping the works is still a highly labor-intensive process, requiring meticulous smoothing, whittling, and glazing, often repeated several times. This technique allows for distinctive forms that resist warping, or what he calls te-ato or "traces of handling" during firing.Thomsen, Hans Bjarne. "Sueharu Fukami: Visions from the Shards of Sennyūji." In Sueharu Fukami 深見陶治, 1947-1993. Exh. cat. New York: Erik Thomsen LLC Asian Art, 2008 Distinctively, instead of the common desire of most potters to leave traces like finger marks visible in the clay, Fukami strives to leave no indication of human creation. Fukami's works also often feature collaborations with artists and technicians who create specifically designed wood and metal stands for the finished pieces. High-pressure slip-casting is a process typically used industrially for mass production, Fukami's adaptation of the technique for a studio pottery setting is the only example of its kind. He is known to additionally create some wheel-thrown works, in combination with the high-pressure slip-casting techniques, which can be seen in works such as his 2003 piece Chū (Ether).