SPIKY SAKE CUP Graffiti

The SPIKY series, said to deliberately approach today's flattened way of seeing things with a sense of the foreign and unfamiliar.
The words illustrated on Koga's signature sake vessels, styled after graffiti, are all positive: "Get Stand Up," "Stay Gold," "Silver Lining." They are messages Koga casts out toward a world suffering under the pandemic.

Studs covering the whole surface evoke punk, graffiti evokes street culture — both find their place on the canvas of a sake vessel, developed within Japanese culture.
Its form seems almost to refuse being picked up.
The "studs" jutting out from the vessel make visible and tangible a force inherently latent within an object. The result is a powerful expression, as if the hidden strength within had burst out onto the surface.

Ceramics, a traditional craft nurtured over a long history. Koga intends, by introducing a stimulus in form, to give the person holding it a fresh sense of surprise.