Jumpei Ueda (born in 1978, Osaka) is well-known for his ceramic works in the motif of Japanese tradition and Japanese pop culture. He recently received The Gotoh Memorial Foundation new comer's prize of art.
He will reside and work in Mexico with this grant for one year from September 2010.
His works are impressive and evocative, because the one got used to seeing in daily life is shown by a different aspect. It is not a mixture of mere parts but the birth of new creatures and the forming that exceeds the country and the culture.
This expression has an important meaning in the point produced with ceramics.
Jumpei Ueda's works consist of mixture of various elements; combination of different character, cohabitation of sex and relation between function and decoration etc.
We can say that this mixing is the embodiment of ceramic art or Jumpei Ueda, himself as ceramist, which comes and goes between contemporary art and craft, or nowaday Japan between occidentalization after modern age and Japanese tradition. It is the embodiment of the one, which is being between. And this expression will be possible because of "Yakimono(fired ware,ceramics) " which is being between…“Utsuwa(recipient)” and “Okimono(figurine)”; function and decoration or craft and fine art. This ambiguity and capacity would have the possibility for the enlargement of expression exceeding the country and the culture.
Nowadays, it is not uncommon the art works in the motif of Japanese tradition and Japanese pop culture. However Ueda's works are different from them in the point of his high technic, his sensitivity and his inquiring mind. His works are more than superficial level.
This exhibition consists of two parts;
In Part 1, we show the big piece which was exhibited in Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, Tokyo in 2009.
In Part 2, we show about 5 new works which eliminate the decoration as possible.
Especially, the works in Part 2 are remarkable because they are his new direction.
* The text provided by Imura art gallery.