Untitled (Charger)

Artist Jun Kaneko (Japanese, born 1942)

Date1988

MediumCeramic

Dimensions27 1/2 × 21 × 4 in. (69.9 × 53.3 × 10.2 cm)

ClassificationsCeramic

Credit LineGift of Dr. Joyce Stuart, 2017

Object numberUAC6556

DescriptionNagoya, Japan, has been renowned for its pottery and porcelain for centuries, yet Nagoya native and painter-by-training Jun Kaneko only became interested in ceramics after moving to Los Angeles in 1963, where he discovered the work of American artists who were expanding the boundaries of the medium. In the ensuing decades, Kaneko has developed a number of ceramics projects: tile murals, such as the one at the Broadway People Mover station; a series of giant disembodied heads, and another of anthropomorphic tanuki (raccoon dogs of Japanese legend); large oblong sculptures called dangos — “dumplings” in Japanese — some of which weigh in at around five tons. One format the artist has returned to repeatedly, however, is a simple oval plate, measuring a little over two feet at its widest. Some are painted with intersecting geometric shapes or polka dots, while others sport juicy brushstrokes, drips, or splatters. Often, Kaneko contrasts areas of vivid color with patches of earthy brown or gray. In the series of ovals from which Wayne State’s example comes, however, the contrasts are somewhat more subtle. Simple shapes — circles, spirals, polygons — are painted in stark black onto the plate’s glossy white surface, but to these otherwise clean, minimal designs Kaneko adds a more organic element: streaks of indigo pigment that bleed from the black areas into the white. Rather than depict merely a dark/light dichotomy, Kaneko creates a contrast between the intentional and the (at least seemingly) accidental — between the rational and the random.

Text by Sean Bieri
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Born in 1942, Jun Kaneko came to the US when he was 21. Introduced to sculptural ceramics by a Los Angeles art collector, Kaneko studied under some of the leading artists of the contemporary ceramics movement, and went on to teach the medium at a number of prestigious art schools, including the Cranbrook Academy of Art. In the early ‘80s, he created the most massive of his dango sculptures with the use of an industrial-size kiln in Omaha, Nebraska. Kaneko moved to Omaha in the 1990s, and with his wife Ree, also a ceramicist, founded KANEKO, a non-profit organization designed to “encourage and explore creativity through exhibitions, performances, lectures, and education.”

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