Between Clouds of Memory: Akio Takamori, a Mid-career Survey

Born and raised in Japan, Akio Takamori has spent the majority of his artistic career in the United States and is regarded as one of the most exciting and imaginative artists to emerge from the golden years of ceramics in the 1980s.After his signature "envelope" vessels of the 1980s, Takamori turned toward freestanding figures installed in distinctive groupings. These figurative sculptures deliver plain-spoken accounts of the artist's ongoing search for personal and cultural identity in an era of increasingly global influences and contradictions, bringing to the medium deep emotive and psychological connotations.Richly illustrated in color, Between Clouds of Memory presents multiple perspectives on the artist's practice. Peter Held is the curator of ceramics for the Ceramics Research Center, Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe. Other contributors include Garth Clark, Toyojiro Hida, and Edward Lebow.… (more)