Sake Set by Kodai Ujiie

ORIBE URUSHI KATAKUCHI (OPEN SAKE POURER)
ORIBE URUSHI GUINOMI (CUP FOR SAKE)
by Kodai Ujiie, Japanese (b. 1990 - )
Oribe Glazes, Urushi
Produced exclusively for J R Richards, 2026
My ceramic sculptures begin with the familiar form of the vessel, but gradually shift toward something less certain-forms that appear to breathe, expand, rupture, or regenerate. Rather than presenting ceramics as fixed objects, I am interested in the moment when form resists definition and exists between categories: vessel and organism, permanence and change, beauty and unease. The surfaces of the works function like living skin. Through layered glazes, ash, and the unpredictable effects of firing, each piece develops its own unique body. The interior void is equally important, not as emptiness, but as a space of potential and transformation. My practice is rooted in Japanese ceramic traditions, while questioning the ideas of perfection and completion often associated with craft. Inspired by the philosophy of wabi, I see beauty not as something complete or stable, but as something that continually evolves. Biological Chaos Wabi proposes an alternative understanding of beauty-one that embraces mutation, imperfection, and the vitality of forms that are always in the process of becoming.
- Kodai Ujiie
Born 1990, Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Lives and works in Tajimi, Gifu, Japan.

There is no mistaking a piece of Kodai san's work. This ascending star of Japanese contemporary ceramics graduated from Tohoku University in 2013 and swiftly followed that with a postgraduate research Masters degree. Since 2015 he has been the subject of no less than 10 solo exhibitions across Japan and been in several mixed exhibitions.

Ujiie is a first-generation artist working entirely outside traditional inheritance. His practice is driven by intuition, risk, and a remarkable sensitivity to material. Watching him work is to witness a kind of trance—a surrender to gesture and form that results in pieces pulsing with energy, tension, and resilience. His glazes, thick and unruly, resist control and conceal their final transformation until the kiln completes their volatile journey.
 
Kodai Ujiie is a contemporary ceramic artist whose work lives between vessel and sculpture, materializing fragile, biomorphic presences via porcelain, glaze, lacquer, and purposeful cracks (kannyū). He navigates a tension between tradition and experimentation, often treating glaze fissures and lacquer inlays as scars or veins that speak of rupture, repair, and the vitality embedded in imperfection.
 
His recent shows have been held at Bernheim, Zürich; Ippodo Gallery, New York; The Stratford Gallery, UK; Tosei ;Kyoto Gallery, Kyoto; Nihonbashi Takashimaya S.C., Tokyo; Galeria Mascota, Mexico City, Mexico. He received a MFA from Tohoku University of Art and Design, Yamagata, Japan (2015) and a BFA from Tohoku University of Art and Design,Yamagata, Japan (2013).