Landscapes — Part 2

Sokyo Lisbon is pleased to announce the second part of Landscapes: a journey through tactile landscapes, showing works from: Eiko Kishi, Joe Isanako, Jun Matsumura, Osamu Kojima, Shozo Michikawa and Toshio Matsui. For centuries, Japanese people have admired the unique surfaces and shapes of tea bowls and other ceramic objects. They look not only at the colors, sheen or markings resulting from long kiln firings, but also at the places where thick or thin slips and glazes run and pool on the surfaces, creating impressions of mountains, rivers or crevices, as if natural landscapes. Sometimes the surfaces are ultra-smooth where winds seem to have blown away the sand, other times, plump vegetal forms give the suggestion of plants and forests. Sometimes heat cracks the clay body of a piece or impurities explode on its surface, creating even more the appearances of rocks or rough terrain. "Landscapes" are called keshiki in Japanese. The appreciation for the tactile qualities of surfaces, shapes and markings – the broader usage of the word keshiki – can be carried over to other objects, including even fabrics. In Landscapes we invite the visitor to discover a wide range of forms and textures – tactile landscapes – in different colors, mediums and dimensions.