Yukiya Izumita – Galerie Hioco

When the Earth Folds Like the Ocean

Between Traditional Learning and Creative Freedom

Born in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, Yukiya Izumita grew up on the shores of the Pacific, surrounded by a mineral and maritime landscape that would profoundly influence his work. At the age of 26, he joined master ceramicist Gakuho Shimodake, with whom he trained for three years in Kokuji yaki, a traditional black pottery from the Tōhoku region. In the early 1990s, he founded his own studio in Noda, equipped with a wood-fired kiln, and quickly established a personal style, free from his initial training.

An Aesthetic Born of the Shores

The coastal environment—rocks, geological strata, the backwash of waves—became the natural vocabulary of his art. Her works play on the superposition of layers of clay (Sekisō series, “strata”), which evoke both sea-battered cliffs and time-worn blocks of metal or driftwood. This aesthetic of erosion and rolling gives her pieces a unique tension: fragile and monumental, austere and organic.

A work between strength and fragility

Izumita explains that she seeks in clay “its roughness, its fragility, its ephemeral nature, its tension, and its lightness.” Her pieces, sometimes compared to monumental origami, fold, tear, or superimpose the clay to create unprecedented forms. They oscillate between sculpture and container, driven by constant experimentation with the material, without ever losing their functional and telluric anchor.

Resilience and Memory

The experience of the 2011 tsunami, which destroyed her home, nourishes an existential dimension in her work. Her ceramics thus become as much explorations of matter as meditations on the fragility of balance, time, and adaptation. Each piece asserts itself as a living organism, born from a slow and meticulous process, then exposed to the vagaries of fire and nature.

Recognition and Collections

Winner of numerous awards in Japan—including the Grand Prize at the Asahi Exhibition (2000, 2002) and the Excellence Award at the Japan Ceramics Biennale (2009)—Izumita has achieved international recognition. Her works have been exhibited at SOFA New York (2005) and at the Révélations Biennale at the Grand Palais in Paris (2015). They are now included in major public collections: the Yale University Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, LACMA in Los Angeles, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Permanent Museum Collections

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, USA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA
Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, USA
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, USA
Mashiko Ceramic Art Museum, Mashiko, Japan
Iwate Museum of Art, Morioka, Japan
Tokoname City Board of Education, Tokoname, Japan

Awards

2011: Iwate Prefectural Award, Iwate Prefecture Art Recommendation Exhibition
2009: Excellence Award, 20th Biennial Japan, Ceramic Art Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan
2002: Grand Prize, 40th Asahi Ceramic Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan
2001: World Crafts Competition, Kanazawa, Japan
2000: Grand Prize, 38th Asahi Ceramic Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan
1995: Excellence Award, Nisshin Foods Co. Noodle Bowl Award Exhibitions