Onishi Gallery is proud to present Yoshi­taka Tsuruta’s solo show “Mono­chrome Land­scape.” This exhibition’s unique­ness is described by Kazuko Todate, the art critic, in her essay on Tsuruta’s work. A white, belt-shaped slip cov­ers the entire sur­face of the hand­some shaped work. Due to the thick­ness of the engobe, the minute white grains assume a snow or sand like tex­ture. The upper lines of the belt cre­ate gen­tle undu­la­tions resem­bling the ridge line of a moun­tain or the slope of a hill that encir­cle the ves­s... Read more

Onishi Gallery is proud to present Yoshi­taka Tsuruta’s solo show “Mono­chrome Land­scape.” This exhibition’s unique­ness is described by Kazuko Todate, the art critic, in her essay on Tsuruta’s work.

A white, belt-shaped slip cov­ers the entire sur­face of the hand­some shaped work. Due to the thick­ness of the engobe, the minute white grains assume a snow or sand like tex­ture. The upper lines of the belt cre­ate gen­tle undu­la­tions resem­bling the ridge line of a moun­tain or the slope of a hill that encir­cle the ves­sel. While cast­ing a quiet shadow across the sur­face of the piece, the light and shade of the slip, fol­low­ing the rhythm of the belt, con­veys a sense of depth akin to a nat­ural landscape. Nagasaka, Yamanashi Pre­fec­ture, where the artist Tsu­ruta Yoshi­taka has his stu­dio, is about two hours from Tokyo by train. The area is blessed with clear air and an abun­dance of nature. The win­dow of Tsuruta’s stu­dio offers a glimpse of the majes­tic shape of the Yat­sug­atake moun­tains. Accord­ing to the sea­son, and even over the course of a sin­gle day, the land­scape con­tin­ues to change with each pass­ing moment. Avoid­ing an explana­tory approach to the nat­ural forms that have accu­mu­lated daily in his mem­ory, Tsu­ruta expresses them in exceed­ingly sym­bolic and stoic terms. And rather than depict­ing his sub­ject directly with a brush, Tsuruta’s dec­o­ra­tive style, an indi­rect tech­nique based mainly on mask­ing, allows him to orga­nize and abstract the con­tent of his expres­sion. More­over, with­out adding an excess of color, he cre­ates a world­view founded solely on the rela­tion­ship between the black clay and the white slip. By pass­ing through this tran­quil monot­one realm, famil­iar scenes are trans­formed by the artist into a fan­tas­tic world. Within which lies a highly refined Japan­ese sensibility.