For most, it conjures an image of traditional Japanese wares embodying the philosophy of wabi-sabi, rendered in an earthy palette in harmony with the natural environment. For Takuro Kuwata, this conventional aesthetic is irrelevant in today’s world. ‘I never understood why ceramics have to reflect nature,’ he says.

As a young man, Takuro followed the established apprenticeship system: he trained under the master potter Zaima Susumu to learn every technique and process traditionally associated with the craft. Alongside his studies, he was also deeply involved with Japan’s underground hip hop scene as a DJ and dancer, spending much of his time in nightclubs; though he lived in both worlds, he felt he never fully belonged in either. This sense of cultural confusion, of being a bridge between the historical and the contemporary, would become the foundation of his work.

Removed from the everyday lives of young people, and so, he explains, ‘I felt the desire to make something that would speak the language of my generation.’ For him, this means reflecting the reality of the westernised culture of Japan today, creating a productive tension in which past and present collide to create a new, hybrid aesthetic.

Born in Hiroshima in 1981, Takuro grew up with stories of the city’s atomic bombing forming a dark undertone to daily life. The fractured forms, peeling skin-like glazes and glistening droplets congealed on the surfaces of his ceramics, which are reminiscent of blood or sweat, have been connected by many to the long shadow of this historical trauma, and to the destruction caused by the series of earthquakes that ripped through Japan in recent decades.

Takuro now lives and works in Toki, a city in the mountainous Gifu Prefecture that sits in the centre of Japan. The nearby Mino area has long been known for its mino-yaki pottery wares and its high quality clay, where renowned for its small-scale potteries, but now it largely houses manufacturers of mass-produced wares. It is from this historic region that Takuro sources both his clay and the stones that pepper his work and cause its eruptions. ‘I feel connected to the history of this place’, he says. ‘My decision to work here is both poetic and pragmatic.’

Drawing from daily life’s visual palette comes naturally to Takuro, who cites the brightness and clamour of advertising hoardings and the excesses of consumerist culture as an influence. His output is roughly divided into two categories: smaller vessels based on the recognisable forms of functional objects, and abstract sculptures that are often large, some reaching three metres tall. All are in vivid hues – cherry red, bubblegum pink, sherbet yellow and glistening metallics – which have earned his work comparisons to 1960s Pop Art. Yet these ceramics, no matter how startlingly fresh they may appear, are deeply rooted in centuries-old traditions. This is true for both the methods used and the concepts that drive his work.

To create his psychedelic pottery, Takuro harnesses long- established techniques including kairagi, ishihaze and kintsugi. Each technique is exaggerated to push clays and glazes to their structural limits. Kairagi, in which the shrinkage of clay body and glaze is purposefully mismatched, covers the surface of his ceramics with cracks; glazes peel back, in places barely clinging on. Vessels erupt into blistered hunks from ishihaze, in which stones, much larger than the very small stones traditionally used, are embedded into the clay. During firing these overheat and explode. Jagged cracks and ruptures are sometimes filled and made gaudy through lavish use of gold and platinum kintsugi. ‘It is important to me that I am surprised every time I open a kiln,’ says Takuro. This love of the unexpected is combined with a thorough knowledge of his process and materials, which minimises the risks that accompany experimentation. His grounding in technical skills narrows the margin for error to a pre-arranged set of possibilities, as in the never entirely predictable, semi-controlled explosions of ishihaze.

Vessels and larger sculptures require different consistencies of clay and techniques. The clay is chosen first, and the decision what to make is based on that particular clay’s qualities. This process is one of play, of trying out one thing or another until a shape suitable for the clay body appears. Forms are thrown on the wheel and then turned after a short period of drying; occasionally metal pins are inserted that will, after firing, drip to form the glossy beads that punctuate some pieces. After another period of drying, Takuro colours surfaces with pigment, then bisque fires at 750oC. The piece are then glazed and fired again at 1250o C. Finally, gold or platinum is applied to sections of the glaze to create metallic accents, then it is fired for the final time at 780oC. Lacking a kiln able to accomodate his large sculptures, these are fired at a ceramics residency studio in a kiln measuring two square metres. These larger sculptures, some of which measure three metres high, are made in two parts and then assembled.

Takuro cites the avant-garde spirit of potters during Japan’s Momoyama period (1568–1600) as an important influence, saying, ‘people no longer expect the level of creative innovation in traditional pottery that these potters were known for. I want to draw on the past, and transform it for the contemporary context.’ It was during this historic period that the art of the tea ceremony flourished – from which Takuro thinks much of Japanese art has been drawn – and the ritual is of continuing interest to the artist. ‘I am less interested in the ceremony itself than in the culture around it,’ he explains. ‘Japanese life has today become so westernised that not many people actually know the ceremony – it is not an everyday occurrence.’ Originally associated with welcoming guests, it is now a process that people often pay to learn in formal settings. ‘I was lucky enough to have met a tea master who showed me the spirit of the tea ceremony of the past’, says Takuro. ‘I saw the joy of the original ritual. Making teabowls gives me a chance to connect with Japan’s cultural and historic past.’

When asked whether his pieces are primarily functional or sculptural, Takuro explains that the meaning of his work changes depending on its environment, as ‘the person who owns it creates its purpose.’ It’s related, Takuro believes, to the concept of mitateru – a poetic process of triggering the imagination through an object’s allusive qualities. He translates this word as ‘thinking of something as something else’; a glaze can become a snowstorm, or the line of a rim can delineate a horizon. Takuro believes this creative concept has its roots in the tea ceremony, in which a master would narrate what he saw in the teabowl and the stories would inflect the bowl’s character. For Takuro, his work can be a representation of an alien landscape, a fungus, or anything else you can think of – as well as, quite simply, a rather remarkable teabowl.