Ken Matsuzaki ─ Burning Tradition

The art of Ken Matsuzaki, a leading figure in modern Japanese ceramics, reflects the heritage of traditional Japanese folk pottery while showcasing the artist's creativity, intuition, and skill. Grounding his pieces in the Mingei (Folk Art Movement) pottery tradition, which emphasizes that the beauty of an object is found in its use, Matsuzaki has achieved an individual style that honors and builds upon tradition while achieving innovation. Matsuzaki's striking vessels are created through processes that he has developed over his thirty-year career. The artist uses the effects of glaze, flame, and ash to produce a wide array of colors and textures on his ceramic canvases and layers of kiln ash, accumulated over a week of firing, to produce the diverse effects that cover the exteriors of many of his pots. These effects are at once both random and carefully cultivated through a process instigated by man, but carried out by nature. To achieve his unique wares, Ken Matsuzaki has combined traditional methods of Japan's Momoyama period (1568-1615) ceramics with new technology based on scientific understanding and extensive experimentation. He has not sought to "re-create" older works, but seeks instead to capture the spirit that moves through the great ceramics of the Momoyama period and instill it in his own original works. Although he has ventured beyond the realm of strictly-defined Mingei ceramics like those produced by his teacher Tatsuzo Shimaoka, Matsuzaki has remained firmly based in the vessel tradition and is the heir to this movement in both literal and spiritual ways. The single-minded pursuit of his vision of beauty, originality, and solid workmanship has gained him wide recognition and acclaim as one of Japan's foremost ceramic artists.