Last week in New York, the 2023 LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize was awarded to artist Eriko Inazaki, recognizing a ceramics practice and her awe-inspiring work Metanoia (2019), a crystallized sculpture with a living, kaleidoscopic effect. The prize’s jury of esteemed creatives included LOEWE Creative Director Jonathan Anderson, art historian and journalist Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, architect and industrial designer Patricia Urquiola, ceramicist Magdalene Odundo, and Director of the Art Department at the Louvre Museum Olivier Gabet, who selected Inazaki’s artwork from a group of 30 finalists. In a championing of time-intensive techniques and deft control of materials, both the winning and shortlisted pieces are currently on view in an exhibition at The Noguchi Museum in New York and online through June 18.
Eriko Inazaki portrait; courtesy of the artist and LOEWE.
Japan-based artist Inazaki draws on her formal education at Musashino Art University, Tokyo and Kyoto City University of Arts, and was previously selected to participate in the Artist in Residence program at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park. Her Metanoia, whose title signifies one’s renewed perspective on life or self, is reminiscent of deep-water coral, its pearly white, microscopic forms radiating into organic, skeletal branches. The stunning work of soulful imagination and artistry left jury members captivated.
Courtesy of LOEWE and The Noguchi Museum.
Within the Isamu Noguchi Studio, dedicated to the acclaimed Japanese American sculptor, finalists from 16 countries across the globe present inspired and joyful works composed of materials such as glass, leather, wood, textiles, and ceramics. Shapes, colors, tones, and textures ebb and flow in a true celebration of the beauty, warmth, and awakening that art, design, and thoughtful craftsmanship can create and perpetuate. “Craft is the essence of LOEWE,” stated Anderson. “As a house, we are about craft in the purest sense of the word. That is where our modernity lies, and it will always be relevant.”
The jury’s special mentions, The Watchers (2022) by artist Dominique Zinkpè and Transfer Surface (2022) by Moe Watanabe, brilliantly re-envision traditional modes of craft making and energize its horizons.
Dominique Zinkpè, “The Watchers,” 2022, 1480 × 1330 × 230 mm., wood and acrylic; courtesy of the artist, LOEWE, and The Noguchi Museum.
Zinkpè, born in Benin, speaks to the traditional Yoruba belief of a succession of births with a monumental wall sculpture. Arranged of small wood pieces, washed with pink and gold, with miniature Ibéji figurines “watching” throughout, the multi-disciplinary artist embraces the past, present, and future of West Africa in its own beloved story and on the world’s stage. Tokyo-based Watanabe molds walnut bark in stunning fashion, and evokes an ancient Ikebana vase-making tradition, rejoicing in the fierce and fluid poetry of mother nature’s seasonal transformations.
Moe Watanabe, “Transfer Surface,” 2022, 370 × 400 × 370 mm., walnut bark; courtesy of the artist, LOEWE, and The Noguchi Museum.
