Upon seeing the work of Japanese artist Otani Workshop, first impressions can be of a somewhat off-kilter playfulness. His sculptures greet viewers with a disarming simplicity and naivety, with their witty renderings of the human face. The works suggest a world experienced without filters and responded to with affection. They also demonstrate an admirable mastery of traditional ceramic techniques and a tremendous attention to detail. They are kind, but not just kawaii; rather, they embody ancient traditions distilled through a highly individual vision, rooted within a spectrum of artistic influences.
Otani was born and raised in Shiga Prefecture, a relatively rural part of the Kansai region near Kyoto, where the town of Shigaraki, with its renowned 800-year ceramic tradition, is also located. Kansai was the seat of power in Japan for over 1000 years, and Kyoto was and remains its cultural heart. The city has been provided with exquisite decorative arts by nearby villages like Shigaraki for centuries, and as such is a physical manifestation of the most sophisticated Japanese aesthetic sensibility.
The artist describes having had a fairly normal, even idyllic, childhood, exploring and communing with nearby mountains and woods, with plenty of time for daydreaming. He enjoyed spotting human faces and animal shapes in stones and other inanimate objects – a sensibility he likens to the animism of Shinto, which teaches that all things are imbued with a spirit. ‘I want to create work that has a spirit of its own,’ he wrote in an exhibition text accompanying his 2020 show at Perrotin in New York City. This almost shamanistic motivation is an underlying element in much of the artist's work.
Otani entered the sculpture program at Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts in 1999, a remote and culturally intriguing choice. ‘I’m from Shiga, so when I was thinking about art school, I looked at Kyoto as well,’ he explained recently. ‘In Kyoto, the art professors tend to be more conceptual. Their approach is often based on planning the work first and then making it. In Okinawa, students were encouraged to begin by using their hands. I preferred that curriculum.’ Rather than study ceramics in the decorative arts department, he says, ‘I wanted to do clay sculpture.’ Although Otani expresses great appreciation for clay work regardless of category, for him the difference between the implied practicality of craft ceramics and the purer expressive intent of sculpture is crucial.
For the most part, Otani’s sculptures are weighty but hollow vessels. In many, such as Tanilla (2022), which depicts a sharp-fanged monster finished with a translucent blue glaze, the eyes are openings, as if the inner anima of the being might escape, or our world might be sucked in. This sense of inflated volume – a recurring characteristic in many of his works – suggests that their inner space is pregnant with meaning. When asked, Otani replied, ‘That way of speaking about the work stems from a tougei approach,’ referring to traditional Japanese ceramic arts, where the formal interplay between outside and inside is a key feature. ‘My sense of volume,’ he continued, ‘is more related to Western sculpture like Aristide Maillol or Marino Marini, artists who really explored volume.’ Indeed, works such as Nepoleon and Equestrian Statue (both 2019) can be seen as clever riffs on Marini’s sculptures of horses.
Having taken a year off from his studies for an immersive personal pilgrimage throughout Japan, Otani graduated in 2004 and returned to Shiga. There he began to make work in the supportive environment of Shigaraki. Needing a name to use for selling his work at a craft fair at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in 2005, he decided upon ‘Otani Workshop’. The word ‘workshop’ – kosakushitsu in Japanese – reminded him of free-wheeling children’s art classes. He has continued to use the name ever since.
After being discovered by fellow artist Takashi Murakami in Tokyo in 2010, Otani was offered exhibitions at Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Tokyo, as well as at Perrotin and Blum & Poe. His heavy exhibition schedule in Tokyo quickly expanded to include yearly solo shows overseas, in Shanghai, Seoul, Paris, and New York City, and many major group shows at home and abroad.
Phenomenally productive, Otani quickly outgrew the shared kiln he used in Shigaraki. In 2017 he found a disused clay-tile factory with ample space and a gigantic gas-fired kiln on the island of Awaji, in the Seto Inland Sea near Kobe, and moved there to work. His corner of Awaji is isolated, and his light-filled, utilitarian studio looks out upon both the ocean and the mountains – an environment which he says provides ongoing inspiration and is conducive to his preferred pace of life. ‘I wanted a large kiln I could use to fire my own work,’ he says. ‘I also really liked this location. Every day here is low-key. Every day has a similar rhythm.’
Although his larger works require careful logistical planning and occasional assistance, Otani’s process is largely spontaneous. ‘Generally,’ he says, ‘When starting a new piece, I’ll have an unformed image in my mind. It might only be, say, a figure that could fit standing in my hand. And as I start working on it, at some point I’ll decide, “This is a bear.”’
Like his sculptures, Otani’s paintings usually depict very bulbous figures and have an emphatically tactile quality. Buddha lying on the road (2020), shown at Perrotin in New York City in 2020, is one of many two-dimensional works the artist has painted on scrap wood, a material which lends both heft and texture to the image.
Otani’s life is one lived almost exclusively in the studio, and he prefers it that way. He brings some of the color and sensibility of his work environment into his exhibition spaces by building shelves and displays from salvaged wood, old furniture, and other detritus he collects from his immediate surroundings. Some of these constructions feel wedded to the works they hold, while others appear to be more ephemeral. Potted plants and other bric-a-brac often complete the set-up. Otani clarifies, ‘Usually they’re just installations. But sometimes I make them as artworks too.’
There is no sign success has spoiled Otani, who really seems to live to work. For him, life as an artist is about giving form to the notion of spirit, the desire to connect, and explore the affinities people can have with beings made of clay. If he is a shaman of sorts, celebrating the denizens of an unseen parallel universe in ways that connect to his Shinto beliefs, it is in ways that are equally grounded in contemporary existence. ‘My practice is about transforming a bare material into something that has an appearance of life,’ he stated recently.
Otani Workshop is represented by Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo, and Perrotin, Paris, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
Azby Brown is a leading authority on Japanese art, architecture, and design, and has lived in Japan since 1985.
Top image: Otani Workshop, Tanilla (detail), 2022. © Otani Workshop/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of the artist and Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo. Please note that a dark filter has been laid over the image for readability.