This 27 cm ceramic vase, signed Kato Kiyokazu, belongs to a body of pieces developed in the 2000s, recognizable by their thick white glaze that freezes in relief on a matte black background. The decoration seems to be born from a shock, a frozen effusion, where the white material splits, opens, stretches, revealing here and there the dark background. At the base, the bare clay surfaces, as if to anchor this organic abstraction in the earth. Nothing is flat: the surface undulates, the glaze cracks, matching the surface of the vase. The contrast between the frozen whiteness and the deep black background gives an almost mineral presence to the object. This work evokes shino or oribe glazes but detaches itself from them: here, the material seems to flow, coagulate, contain itself just before overflowing. It is a formal signature specific to the artist.

Kato Kiyokazu was born in Kyoto in 1970 into a family of potters. His grandfather, Jihei, continued the Furuta-Oribe tradition in the Seto pottery lineage.

A 1990 graduate of the Kyoto Prefectural Technical College of Ceramics, he took over the Seizan-gama kiln founded by his father in 2002.

From then on, his work asserts a personal aesthetic, nourished by the Mino heritage while continuing the family tradition.

His work has received numerous accolades, including the Grand Prix at the Japan Ceramic Art Exhibition in 2013, and has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, notably at the Kuroda Toen gallery in Ginza, where this vase was exhibited. His technical mastery is combined with a rare visual intuition: each piece seems to emerge from the fire with its own identity, oscillating between molten material and contained form.

Piece sold with its original signed box.