Shiro Otani   1      2      3      -      PRINTER VERSION

>> much like the imperfect perfection of nature—fragile, raw, full of contradictions—that is never redundant and always compelling. Shiro Otani tries to emulate these qualities in his own work by the continuous denial of the superfluous, as well as his insistence on searching for beauty in the basic, rather than trying to find it in the lavish and/or the extravagant.

One of the best examples of melding this notion of harmony with his desire to fashion a personal statement inside the Shigaraki tradition is his "broken" ware. Begun in the early '80s, these plates and vases were made deliberately to crack or break in the long firing.

While "1981 Plate" may seem to be nothing more than a dysfunctional abstraction, one only has to realize that a plate is simply a surface on which food can be served. In that context we see that this piece can be read as two plates, each with its own distinct surface and edge. Furthermore, when the two are placed side by side, they create the sort of dynamic tension that either piece alone or both together as an unbroken whole would be incapable of delivering. Otani not only has enlarged our notion of the plate and how it can be perceived and used, but also has invited us, through use, to participate in his aesthetic proposition. Though controversial, these dramatic and elegant statements have brought significant critical recognition and mark Shiro Otani's emergence as one of the most important and influential potters of his generation in Japan.

Otani, like all modern potters who are engaged in the struggle to fashion meaning rather than mere utensils, is involved in creating objects that actively challenge our imagination and point beyond themselves to ideas, feelings and emotions that are part of our cultural as well as our personal lives. A vase, for example, may appear mannered and self-conscious when compared to the deliberately crude modeling of early Shigaraki tea wares that were trying to affect the rusticity of older utilitarian jars. By playing, however, to our traditional view of Shigaraki, while at the same time contradicting that view, Otani forces us to reexamine our preconceptions about how beauty can be expressed inside that tradition. Some of Otani's works are more aggressive in this respect than others, but all are about his struggle—and we could say our own—with the dilemma of what it means to be modern and yet feel mysteriously drawn to primordial forms of expression.

Like tea-ware potters of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, who built on the tradition of Shigaraki that preceded them, Otani has struggled to expand on what he inherited. He has taken that history and combined it with his own modern vision to give us work that somehow satisfies both our sense of continuity with the past and our desire to explore the possibilities of the future.
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