Jun Kaneko: Retrospective

February 8 - May 18, 2003 Free Admission

This will be the largest major showing of his work to be presented to the Midwest. Dedicating all seven galleries to Kaneko’s pieces, the Daum Museum is to become one of the top exhibitors of this ceramic-based artist in the country. Kaneko will incorporate the medium of ceramics, painting, and cast glass in order to demonstrate his well-rounded nature as an artist. Also on display will be Kaneko’s works on paper, which is a premiere exhibition of these pieces. Included in the ceramic realm of the exhibition will be two ceramic tile walls, one measuring 17ft high, the other, with a total distance of 36 feet, wraps around two walls. This demonstrates the dynamics of Kaneko’s view on the new façade of ceramics.
JUN KANEKO was born in 1942 in Nagoya, Japan where he first trained as a painter. After coming to California to study in the early 1960’s he became interested in ceramics, a practice that was undergoing a philosophical revolution.

Working in clay, combining the furniture of the universe—earth, air, water and fire, he created a distinctive contribution to contemporary art: the dango (“dumpling” in Japanese), a monumentally large, gaily painted and patterned ceramic sculpture whose mission is to brighten the heart and lift the spirit.
–Arthur C. Danto
Kaneko at Work

“In his work, whether sculpture, paintings, prints, drawings, or glass, the surface is the site of a transition between the magnetism of the characteristics of the material and the potential that material can realize in tandem with the insight of human experience. Over the forty years of Kaneko’s career, the process of gaining self-knowledge, the most consistent impetus to art, has been deepened by the variety of materials he has used and his familiarity with their essential characteristics”
–Glenn Brown, Essayist
Jun Kaneko Catalog

“Really, I don’t think my art is big. You have to realize, it’s a continuous progression over 35 years and it just got bigger and bigger. Always when I make pieces, it is not just the piece itself but its relationship to the space around it that has my attention. I don’t think of my artwork as separate from the environment—it always depends on what it is next to. It’s about proportion.”
–Jun Kaneko
Freeways and cul-de-sacs