NEW EXHIBITION
Across the Sea
October 15 – December 22, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday October 15, 6-8pm (Remarks by Amy G. Poster at 6:30pm)
Since our inauguration in 2006, the gallery has played a leading role in introducing international audiences to KOGEI: a unique category within Japanese art defined by exceptional craftsmanship, a profound engagement with material, and the transformation of centuries-old traditions into contemporary forms of visual expression. Marking its twentieth anniversary and its ongoing commitment to advancing global appreciation of the field, we are proud to present Across the Sea, a major exhibition of KOGEI opening October 15.
Bringing together ten of Japan’s most accomplished KOGEI practitioners, Across the Sea offers a compelling survey of contemporary practice across generations and disciplines. Through ceramics, metalwork, lacquer, and other media, the exhibition demonstrates how these artists build upon inherited techniques while pursuing highly individual creative visions. Their works reveal a dynamic field in constant dialogue with its past, challenging conventional boundaries between craft and fine art.
Despite the diversity of approaches on view, the artists share a commitment to pushing the expressive possibilities of their materials. Together, their works underscore the remarkable vitality of contemporary KOGEI, demonstrating how traditional processes continue to generate fresh aesthetic languages and new forms of artistic inquiry.
Among the exhibition’s standout artists is metalwork specialist Ōsumi Yukie (b. 1945), a Living National Treasure renowned for elegant vessel forms created through an exacting hammering process and enriched with delicate applications of metal leaf. Suggesting wind, clouds, and the movement of water, her luminous surfaces transform traditional metalworking into objects of striking contemporary beauty. Representing a younger generation, Rusu Aki (b. 1976) wields her blowtorch on fragments of industrial iron, creating sculptural works shaped by rust, oxidation, and elemental processes of transformation. In lacquer, Onihira Keiji (b. 1973) evokes celestial expanses through surfaces enriched with gold, silver, crushed quail eggshell, white-lipped oyster shell, South Sea abalone, and other materials of extraordinary complexity, while Noguchi Ken (b. 1982) builds rhythmic concentric patterns across sculptural forms, producing shimmering black surfaces that recall the movement and depth of the sea.
Ceramics, long central to our exhibition program, are represented by works from Ōhi Toshio Chōzaemon XI (b. 1958) and Kaneshige Kōsuke (b. 1943). Ōhi’s ship-shaped water jar, derived from a form first developed in the seventeenth century, provided an important point of departure for the exhibition and resonates with our longstanding mission of carrying KOGEI beyond Japan’s shores. Kaneshige’s From the Sea series, which reimagines the ancient Bizen stoneware tradition through sculptural invention and subtle humor, provided the inspiration for the exhibition’s title.
More than an anniversary event, Across the Sea offers an opportunity to encounter artists whose work is redefining perceptions of Japanese art both at home and abroad. United by technical mastery, material sensitivity, and an unwavering commitment to creative exploration, they demonstrate that tradition remains not a constraint but a dynamic source of artistic possibility. Together, their works reveal a field in continual transformation and one whose influence is increasingly resonating beyond Japan.
With Across the Sea, we reaffirm our commitment to championing Japanese KOGEI internationally, inviting collectors, curators, scholars, and the wider public to engage with a remarkable group of artists whose works embody both cultural continuity and contemporary vision.
We are delighted to welcome Amy Poster, Consulting Curator of Asian Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and former Chair and Curator Emerita of the Brooklyn Museum’s Department of Asian Art, who will offer opening remarks at the reception.
We look forward to welcoming you soon!
To learn more and view the works, click here,
UPCOMING FAIR
Salon Art + Design
Crafted Dialogues: Art and Design in Conversation
Booth C5
November 4–8, 2026
Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue, NYC
We are pleased to announce that our presentation for Salon Art + Design 2026 has been reimagined by Guillaume Coutheillas, founder of frenchCALIFORNIA, as an intimate collector’s interior, bringing contemporary Japanese craft into dialogue with works by artists from New York, Italy, and Korea.
The booth embodies the cultural dialogue at the heart of Coutheillas’s practice. Born inParis, he combines French refinement with an American sense of openness and a cosmopolitan curiosity about objects from across the world. His interiors forge connections across cultures, periods, and disciplines, allowing each piece to retain its identity while contributing to a larger narrative.
Alongside wall works by sculptor Jeffrey Maron, portraitist Agostino Rocco, and mixed-media artist Ran Hwang, the Onishi Gallery booth will present a wide range of Japanese KOGEI: a distinctive category defined by exceptional craftsmanship, a profound engagement with material, and the reinvention of centuries-old traditions in contemporary form. The featured artists work in lacquer, clay, and metal.
In lacquer, Onihira Keiji addresses contemporary subjects while retaining the classical language of gold powders, shell inlay, and polished surfaces. Noguchi Ken’s sculptural forms, by contrast, evoke the movement and depth of the sea.
In ceramic art, Kaneshige Kōsuke’s subtle humor reimagines ancient kiln traditions, Konno Tomoko’s biomorphic forms exploit the tension between attraction and apprehension, and Ōhi Toshio Chōzaemon XI’s work in stoneware evokes the primordial forces of the earth.
In metalwork, Rusu Aki wields her blowtorch to create sculptural works in iron shaped by elemental processes of transformation, while Living National Treasure Ōsumi Yukie uses gold and lead overlays to imbue her silver vessels with an extraordinary sense of softness.
Also featured will be a selection of contemporary ceramics from the Setouchi region of western Honshu, Japan’s main island. Okano Genroku creates functional and sculptural works in the Bizen ware tradition, celebrated for its chance effects, rough textures, and visible traces of the maker’s hand. Kuroi Hiroshi combines the thin-walled, elegant heritage of Mushiage ware with extensive use of modern polychrome and iron glazes.
Conceived as a space of encounter and discovery, Crafted Dialogues: Art and Design in Conversation celebrates the connections that emerge when diverse traditions, materials, and perspectives converge, revealing craft’s unique capacity to bridge cultures, histories, and disciplines.
We look forward to welcoming you soon to the Park Avenue Armory!
To learn more about the fair, click here,
About the Gallery
Since its opening in 2005, Onishi Gallery has featured contemporary Japanese artists who work in a range of media, including ceramics, metalwork, lacquer, glass, sculpture and painting. These artists are united in their common embrace of tradition in the creative process, and they are distinct in their exquisite and diverse modes of expression. Onishi Gallery merges the past with the present through the presentation of historically rich explorations of traditional art forms and ambitions experimentations in new formats in the center of the international contemporary art scene in New York City.
The Japanese Government has designated several artists that Onishi Gallery represents as Preservers of Important Intangible Cultural Properties, more commonly known as “Living National Treasures.” The Minister of Culture considers locality, tradition and the perpetuation of historic techniques when awarding this title to artists. Once an artist is recognized as a Living National Treasure, their profile publicized on a national and global level, dramatically increasing the value of their work. Many of these artists have works that are included in the permanent collections of major museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Worcester Museum of Art. The system aims to not only celebrate and preserve the historic artistic traditions of Japan, but challenge living artists to continuously improve and incorporate their own individual style while still mastering their craft.
