‘KOGEI’ (Japanese craft) has always fascinated people with its traditional techniques that maximize materials’ potential and sophisticated handiwork. Both of these points have been cultivated over a long history throughout Japan. It reflects creators’ aesthetic sensibilities and their new ideas for each era in a variety of ways, for example:
– Craft used as a method to create simple, beautiful yet functional daily necessities.
– Artistic craft that achieves the ultimate elegance through advanced techniques.
-Craft as a unique, expressive media that goes beyond the practical.

We can see new creativity emerging from the interaction between pieces, people, and places not only in the production of such craft but in the use of them as well. The cultural concept of ‘Mitate’, involves finding new perspective or meaning by creatively reinterpreting familiar objects or situations. This is considered one of the key factors that give Japanese craft its uniqueness.

This exhibition features 16 creators who use crafting methods such as lacquer, ceramics, dyeing and weaving, glasswork, metalwork and introduces the fusion of contemporary ideas and sensibilities, new materials, techniques, and tradition. It also focuses on today’s perspectives in craft that respond to social issues and environmental awareness in collaboration with experts in other fields.

The installation has been designed in collaboration with the artist Takuya Kumagai, who draws on digital concepts to explore contemporary perspectives on sculpture. The soundtrack for the exhibition has been composed by Kazumichi Komatsu, an artist active within the fields of fine art and music. The work will be placed in an experimental space that creates harmony and contrast between object and place. This has been inspired by the situations in society where the real and virtual blend together through the accelerated evolution of digital technology.