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Don Soker Contemporary Art
September 5 - October 17, 2015Info
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http://www.donsokergallery.com/
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(415) 291-0966
Shoichi Seino Untitled (Work No.4), 2015, industrial ceramic graphite with fused glass, 7" x 9" x 1"
Don Soker Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Denaturation, an exhibition of a series of small but substantial wall mounted ceramic and glass sculptures by Shoichi Seino. The works in the exhibition are of an unusual technique, using industrial ceramic graphite made from carbon, and kiln fired at temperatures in excess of 2000°F. After Seino fires them 2-3 times, he puts fragments of glass on the graphite objects and fires them again 2-3 times at a lower temperature of 600°F until the glass melts onto the graphite as he intends. The title of the exhibition refers to a process in biochemistry to change the nature or natural qualities of something by some form of external stress. In this case, intense heat.
Seino has long been occupied by the process of change in a material. On the back of each of these new works there is a metal plate on which he has recorded its’ weight in grams before and after each firing. Each firing results in a lesser weight. As the art writer Kenneth Baker has said about Seino’s work, “he has become interested in disappearance”. Some amount of the carbon has been transformed into gas by evaporation. For Seino, making work of ceramic graphite manufactured for industrial use and fired at extremely high temperatures is the ultimate aspect of metamorphosis by fire. These works are simultaneously very primitive as well as futuristic, even otherworldly. None have titles to suggest their meaning.
Seino studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts. He lives in Nagoya, Japan. This is his 7th exhibition at Don Soker Contemporary Art