Shintaro Uchimura

After working as a bridge designer, Uchimura was drawn to the world of ceramics through his fascination with antique pottery. Although he has earned widespread acclaim for his reproductions of historical ceramics(utsushi), his practice is driven neither by nostalgia for the past nor by a fundamentalist commitment to traditional materials. Rather, he describes the act of making reproductions as being equivalent to drawing in the visual arts: through repeated practice, one gradually approaches the essence of the original. If reproductions are a means of approaching the essence of their subject, then Uchimura's long-standing 'Kōrai Series,' which he has pursued consistently for more than a decade, together with the sculptural works he has developed in recent years, can be understood as expressing the beauty he perceives in historical ceramics through a different artistic language. Just as there has never been a great abstract painter who lacked the ability to draw, these works demonstrate that the discipline of reproduction serves as the foundation from which his original artistic vision emerges.