Shino and Stone

Opening Reception: Friday, September 10, 2010, 6:00 to 8:00pm

Japanese master ceramist Goro Suzuki presents an exhibition of 16 recent works in the style known as Shino during the month of September at the Frank Lloyd Gallery. These pieces, some tea ceremony objects and some inventive covered forms, use variations of the Shino glaze. The show will also include new work made with ceramic glazes on stones and small boulders. In his fourth one-person show in Los Angeles, Goro Suzuki demonstrates a masterful manipulation of the material and an aesthetic of rustic simplicity.

Shino is a style of ceramics primarily characterized by a white color, in both the clay body and the glaze. It was developed over several centuries in the Mino region of Japan. The contemporary master Suzuki treats the traditional material with an experimental attitude and embraces natural occurrences in the process.

Long admired by Japanese collectors, the work is a favorite of artists and connoisseurs in the United States. Suzuki's career spans over 45 years, from his early days as a production potter through his tremendous success as a revered master ceramist. He is reported to be one of the next artists designated as a Japanese "living treasure".

The Frank Lloyd Gallery has presented three previous exhibitions of Suzuki's work. The first show, in 1998, featured rustic teapots, full of asymmetric architecture and brushed surface design. The second show, in 1999, concentrated on the tea ceremony, a highly refined Japanese ritual. Our third show concentrated on the centuries-old Oribe style and included Suzuki's extraordinary vessels, stacked boxes and ceramic chairs.

Goro Suzuki's work has been exhibited extensively in Japan, and is included in museum collections in that country as well as the United States. His work is represented in the Japanese Pavilion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Hetsens Museum in Dusseldorf, Germany, and the Marer Collection at Scripps College in Claremont, California.