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Focus on: Yoshiaki KOJIRO

Yoshiaki Kojiro LOEWE 1024x682 1

Focus on: Yoshiaki KOJIRO

Yoshiaki Kojiro, winner of the Gold Medal of Bavarian State Prize, MEISTER DER MODERNE 2019 and Finalist of the LOEWE Craft Prize 2017. “As a material, it has been my great fortune to encounter foaming glass, with its uncontrollable expansions and deflation. My work is to present a product that is formed by the interaction of glass, tiny bubbles, heat and the gravity. It is my greatest interest to extract the certain structure from this process as naked as possible, and through my works, I hope to emphasize suggestion rather than description”. Technique: “I put glass powder with the foaming agents (calcium carbonate) into the fire proof plaster mold. And then fire it for casting (around 820°C) in the electric kiln, the mold is filled with foamed glass gradually like baking bread. The extent of glass foaming is depends on my aim of each piece. I regulate it by the timing of rapid cooling (around 600°C). After waiting for the natural temperature, I remove the plaster mold and fire it again for slumping (around 700°C). The foamed glass solid is deflated, gets wrinkly and cracked texture by heat and gravity. Finally, I just open the door of kiln to stop the movement of foamed glass solid at a certain temperature (around 600°C) as the first step. The foamed glass does not stay in only the field of art. For example, we are able to recognize it for the soil improvement and the insulation materials. In my case, the cue of using this material was from many experiments as I reconsidered about the range of ‘vitreous’ and about typical image of glass in my mind.” Scopri di più sull’artista Video Courtesy of Keiko Art International