GALLERY crossing is pleased to present Tsuki to Utena, a solo exhibition by Junsuke Inatomi, on view from October 17 (Sat.) through November 1 (Sun.). This marks Inatomi’s fourth exhibition at the gallery and his first in three years.

Born in Osaka in 1981, Junsuke Inatomi is the son of a ceramic artist. After studying ceramics himself, he established his studio practice in Osaka, where he continues to work today. His works are primarily created through hand-building, using white-toned slips and glazes. While strongly sculptural in form, his vessels encompass a range of contexts inherent to the medium of ceramics, allowing them to exist as objects that invite the viewer’s emotions and imagination. Within their restrained palette lies a complex interplay between absence and presence, life and death. Their forms, gently swelling outward from within, also reveal a quiet beauty as still-life objects, one that extends beyond questions of function and meaning.

Throughout his practice, Inatomi has explored a wide range of formal variations. For this exhibition, however, he turns toward rounded forms—the primordial shape of the vessel, and at the same time, a form associated with the abundance and potential of life. When speaking of Inatomi’s work, words such as prayer, light, and beauty repeatedly come to mind. Yet in the process of making these new works, one can sense a shift in the artist’s perspective: from these expansive words that point toward things beyond our grasp, toward the more physical word tai (胎), referring to the womb and to life carried within the body.

The gaze that began with his 2014 solo exhibition Tsuki yomu hone (Bones That Read the Moon) at Kakiden Gallery in Tokyo—an upward gaze toward the distant, unreachable moon—has gradually turned toward a form of life that cannot be seen, yet can be touched: life held within the body. A landscape born from the words tsuki (月, moon) and utena (台, pedestal or stand) now turns inward through the single character 胎 (tai). How will this shift in perspective give rise to a new landscape?

By returning to a point of origin as both a ceramic artist and a maker of forms, Inatomi has arrived at an expression that is at once familiar and newly deepened. We warmly invite you to experience this new body of work.