Untitled Sculpture

Inoue Masayuki is an important artist of the younger generation who studied with Nakamura Kinpei (1935-) at Tama University of Arts, the only major arts college in the Tokyo area where sculptural ceramics are taught. A notable feature of the teaching arrangement at this institution is that the ceramics course is run not within a ceramics or design department, the usual loci of ceramics teaching at Japanese art college, but in the oil-painting department. Ceramics are introduced not as an independent discipline with its own set of principles and priorities, but as one of any number of potential vehicles for the expression of creative ideas. Nakamura's energy and eloquence as a teacher and the freedom of approach to clay he has been in the position to encourage - powerfully manifested in this work by Inoue Masayuki - have played an important role in the recent rise of Tokyo as a leading centre of experimental ceramics.