A potter who aspires to the ultimate formative beauty.

There is a beauty in form that cannot be created by humans. It's a natural thing.
Takahashi has been fascinated by the beauty of asymmetrical forms created by nature, such as fruits and buds, and has continued to create works using them as motifs.
Why are you drawn to the beauty of forms created by nature, and how have you pursued these forms?

As a member of the second baby boom generation, Takahashi says that when he was young, he felt cramped and crowded with people everywhere he went, and everyone was expected to behave in the same way.
That didn't change even after I entered Musashino Art University. Easy to use, simple and beautiful pottery. It seemed like everyone was spinning the potter's wheel in the same way under this theme.

One day, I learned that there is more to pottery than just pottery. A growing desire to move away from the potter's wheel and create figurative works led him to enroll in Faenza National School of Ceramic Art in Italy, which had a ceramic carving course. In between productions, I looked around the museum, and the more I looked at Western works, the more asymmetrical Japanese works caught my eye. I was particularly interested in the exhibition ``400 Years of Raku Tea Bowls: Tradition and Creation'' held at the Faenza International Museum of Ceramics.

While Western beauty seeks symmetry, perfection, and splendor, the Japanese sense of beauty has an element of finding beauty in things that are uneven, imperfect, and simple. These have been expressed in words such as ``wabi-sabi'' and ``yūgen'' since ancient times. In other words, while in the West we seek artificial beauty through orderly symmetry, in Japan we seek beauty through asymmetrical forms based on harmony with nature. Takahashi may have inadvertently sensed this difference in aesthetic sense in Italy.

While pursuing the beauty of form, the material he arrived at was porcelain clay, which has the characteristics of a dignified and beautiful white color. In Italy, statues of Mary and other statues are made of porcelain clay, and there is hope for creating figurative works using porcelain clay. However, porcelain clay was more difficult to work with than china clay, and it was necessary to try all kinds of techniques to create shapes with porcelain clay. In order to create the ideal form, he abstracted the motif of an asymmetrical "fruit" and used the time-consuming process of "casting" it into multiple parts.

In the finished work, the shadows created by the sharpness and smooth lines appeared. The shadows reflected on the base of white porcelain are not uniform. They have gradations that affect space and light, projecting subtle changes in hue. What's more, because it is made of white porcelain, the beauty of the shadows and shapes is further enhanced.

Regardless of the field, Takahashi's ultimate formative beauty, which is rooted in the Japanese aesthetic sense of asymmetry, is already attracting keen attention both domestically and internationally.

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