PRESS RELEASE
Jun Kaneko: Sculpture
Dec 19, 2009 – Jan 16, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Cristin Lane or Beverly Cuyler
For more information call 561.241.3050 or www.elainebakergallery.com
Jun Kaneko: Sculpture
Exhibit Dates: December 19, 2009 – January 16, 2010
Artist Reception: Saturday, December 19, 2-5pm
Jun Kaneko was born in 1942 in Nagoya, Japan and came to the United States in the 1960’s. Particularly drawn to sculptural ceramics, Kaneko studied at the Chouinard Institute of Art during a pivotal time when ceramics as functional craft was expanding to embrace the highest levels of contemporary artistic expression. After studying with Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, and Ken Price in California, Kaneko emerged during the time now identified as the contemporary movement or the “America Clay Revolution.”
Jun Kaneko’s work is defined by its overwhelming scale and exquisite form, implying a spatial relationship between the object and viewer. Evidence of Kaneko’s early years as a painter exists in the richly glazed surfaces and rhythmic pulse of his marks and patterns. Their sheer size combined with the artists hunger to push the physical limitations of his material, generate an undeniable presence in the work.
In 2006 the Joslyn Art Museum presented Jun Kaneko: Madama Butterfly, an exhibition celebrating the artist’s set and costume designs for Opera Omaha's performance of Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly.
Kaneko’s sculpture is in over 50 museum collections including American Crafts Museum, NY, The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, Japan, Los Angeles County Museum, CA, the Toledo Museum in Ohio and Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI.
For the past two decades Elaine Baker Gallery has been synonymous with modern and contemporary art, and has come to be a respected resource for collectors, museums, architects, designers and corporations nationwide. The gallery offers works by established and mid-career international artists, while maintaining an inventory of strong secondary market work. The gallery has mounted over 150 important exhibitions, displaying paintings, sculpture, photography and major works on paper.
We are opening a new gallery and sculpture project at the prestigious Boca Raton Resort. This will be in addition to our space at the Gallery Center where we have just celebrated our 20th year. More information to be announced.