Toshiaki Noda “Issues from the Hands”

After studying ceramics in Japan, in 2008 Toshiaki Noda graduated from California State University, Long Beach (BFA). He currently lives in the United States and works with ceramic art. Noda’s ceramic work embraces textures that recall tree bark, rock surfaces, or metal, bleeding colors together as if on the surface of water, and forms liberated from the functionality of traditional everyday ceramics. All his works start with creating symmetrical forms. The artist then adds layers, smashes, tears, and dents, turning them into new forms after multiple layers of changes and destruction. The completed work is distorted yet looks organic, reminding us of the transitions which all creatures on earth have undergone.

Noda chooses motifs that have been left behind, or abandoned in daily life. As Noda states that “(he is) interested in the ways in which ordinary things change into beautiful, mysterious and unique states as time goes by. I cannot help imagining the stories that they experience." These are the artist’s constant sources of inspiration.

All things surrounding us, regardless of the presence or absence of human intervention, are continuously undergoing small changes at every second. Construction and creation, transformation, and division and destruction. Changes occur by through the accumulation of multiple incidental factors over time, which suggests conceptual associations with the accumulated and dug-up soil that is fired and then turned into ceramic.

Noda also experiments with approaches to transforming conventional ceramic forms such as flower vases and tea bowls, and combining them with functional objects including buckets or stacked egg cartons, suggesting his attempts to recapture the concept or history of ceramic ware that has developed as a daily commodity. He has developed critical perspectives towards the history of ceramic, perhaps under the influence of the famous ceramic production area of Arita, which is the artist’s hometown.
Noda’s work takes shape with many layers: the time spent with the clay, his intention at every moment during the process of formation, and the documentation of specific reactions by the clay towards the intention, suggesting the new possibilities of ceramic, as well as questioning traditional craft and the boundaries between ceramic and fine art, decoration and sculpture.

This is Noda’s first solo exhibition in Japan, and features his ceramic works created from 2012 to 2016. Texture, cracks, ruptures, drips, hollows, gaps, natural curves, and layers. These works with multiple complex elements speak about the beautiful effects of time upon objects. We may find within them natural landscapes with layered mountains and plants, ragged artifacts, or relics. His work is a crystallization of time, and attracts the viewer by liberating ceramic from what it “should” be.

Toshiaki Noda was born in 1982 in Saga, Japan. After graduating from the Ceramic course of Arita Technical High School, he moved to the United States, and graduated with a degree in printmaking from California State University, Long Beach. After working as an associate at BrickHouse Ceramic Art Center in Long Island City, New York, and as an assistant to Jeff Koons, he has worked at the Sculpture space NYC since 2015. He presents work both in solo and group exhibitions in New York and California, and his work is collected by the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation.