ASIA WEEK

Takemura Yuri (b. 1980), Group of Teabowls

UNFURLING FORMS: New Work by Takemura Yuri
July 9 – August, 2025
39 East 78th St, Ste 401, NYC

Joan B Mirviss LTD is thrilled to debut a new series of teabowls and sculptural works by rising ceramic artist Takemura Yuri (b. 1980), opening July 9. Following her sold-out international debut in 2017, Takemura now turns her attention to the passage of time, reflecting on life’s shifting rhythms through clay.

This new body of work marks a thoughtful evolution of her signature style. While her exuberant swirling forms and bold color palette remain, Takemura introduces textured glazes and weathered surfaces that speak to memory, aging, and impermanence. Expanding into sculpture, she explores twisting, branching forms that trace the arc of a life unfolding. For Takemura, working with clay is a meditative, deeply personal process—one that transforms lived experience into visual poetry.

In many ways, her new series reflects both the joy and pain that Takemura has experienced over the past few years, and the ways her aesthetic sensibilities have evolved in response. In addition to giving birth to a daughter, she provided full-time care for her elderly father, a graphic designer who had long shaped her appreciation for art and sensitivity toward color, at the end of his life. A resident of Kanazawa, she also witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake, which resonated with her own experience caring for her father. She was particularly struck by the image of wreckage filling Kanazawa’s inner sea. Gazing out at the detritus, much of which was wood, she realized that even that had a past as something rooted and alive. She imagined its future, transformed by the force of the waves into a new form with its own beauty and energy. This is the inspiration behind her new body of work.

While she continues her focus on the form of the teabowl, she has also found a new avenue for expression in sculpture. This has given her an opportunity to experiment with forms and has inspired her to reconsider her understanding of functionality in ceramics.

Still early in her career, Takemura’s works have garnered numerous accolades and been acquired by prestigious institutions internationally. They can be found in the collections of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others.

To learn more, click here.

Hagino Noriko, Uchidashi Silver Water Jar, 2014, silver, 6 1/4 × 6 × 6 in. (16 × 15 × 15 cm)

Heated Colors, Hammered Forms: Female Metal Artists of Japan
July 10 – August 22, 2025
16 East 79th Street, NYC

Onishi Gallery is proud to spotlight the pioneering contributions of women to a traditionally male-dominated realm of kogei—metalwork once closely tied to the samurai—in their new summer exhibition, Heated Colors, Hammered Forms: Female Metal Artists of Japan.

Although metals are especially hard to handle, shape, and decorate, the five featured artists have each devoted a lifetime to the medium, using it to produce masterpieces that are every bit as expressive and beautiful as work in less obstinate materials such as clay or textile.

The exhibition features masterful creations by Osumi Yukie, Oshiyama Motoko, Hagino Noriko, Okamoto Yoshiko, and Otsuki Masako. Working in gold, silver, platinum, copper, lead, and unique Japanese alloys, these artists employ techniques such as casting, chiseling, hammering, and overlay. While each artist brings a distinct personal mode of expression to her work, all are united in their embrace and deep commitment to the time-honored traditions of Japanese metalcraft.

They invite you to experience these contemporary masterpieces for yourself this summer!

To learn more,  click here.

Shuyi Cao, The Nectar of Perpetuity (detail), 2025, stoneware, driftwood, dried seed, oyster and clam shells, coral, seashell fragments, sea glass, recycled plastic, steel, acrylic paint, 35 x 14 x 16 in. (89 x 35.5 x 40.5 cm)

Post-Natural Oasis
July 10 – August 22, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 10, 6-8pm
120 East 65th Street, NYC

Alisan Fine Arts is excited to present Post-Natural Oasis, an exhibition featuring the work of Shuyi Cao, Fu Xiaotong, KKD, Leah Ying Lin, Andrew Luk, Man Fung-yi, Anna Danyang Song, and Yi Xin Tong. The exhibition brings together a collection of sculpture, wall reliefs, and other forms of object-based art that reflect upon humanity’s relationship with the natural world. How might this post-natural world look in the future, or along an alternate geological timeline? Although many of the artists employ objects from nature, none of the works in this exhibition are ‘natural’; rather, they examine the innate human drive to infer cultural meaning from our natural environment.

Shuyi Cao’s sculptures combine preserved shells, recycled materials, ceramics, and borosilicate glass to evoke alternate geological timelines. Works like Pabulite (fin) (2024) resemble eroded forms or shed skins, capturing the unsettling poetics of deep ecology. Core (2024), hand-crafted in borosilicate glass, suggests primordial life and the liminal space between organic and inorganic. In The Nectar of Perpetuity (2025), natural and synthetic elements—rocks, driftwood, plastic—mimic growth patterns like coral or minerals, blurring boundaries and reflecting the fractured order of today’s material world.

Yi Xin Tong’s work envisions a parallel civilization emerging through excavation. Observatory II (2025) pairs a flint nodule from Staten Island with a steel air tank, merging materials from different geological eras. The hand-engraved flint—once used to spark fire—is now supported by a copper sphere sealing air from 2025. Part of an ongoing series, Observatory functions as a sculptural instrument for seeing, exploring excavation, circularity, material tension, and asymmetry.

Fu Xiaotong, known for her pinprick works on paper, extends her exploration of ancient religions and humanity’s bond with nature into sculpture. Drawing on the Egyptian deity “NUN,” her forms resemble relics or imagined deities, reflecting the lingering influence of ancient beliefs on modern life.

Man Fung-yi also explores spirituality, but through a personal lens. Her paired gourd-shaped steel sculptures—one woven and hollow, the other solid—symbolize unity and cosmic harmony: ‘merging in the vast universe, two becoming one, without distinction, without beginning or end…’.

Andrew Luk’s Thale Cress series is named after a plant used in space agriculture due to its radiation sensitivity, symbolizing extraterrestrial colonization. The works incorporate Martian Regolith Simulant and “liquified carbon,” a playful stand-in for Chinese ink that blurs cultural readings of material. Pages from science fiction stories by Ted Chiang, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Ray Bradbury serve as structural and conceptual elements, grounding the sculptures in questions of history, ethics, and the metaphysical. Here, text is not just content—it’s material.

The artist duo KKD—Lam Tung Pang and Lambert Law—draw from science fiction to create T.S.N.F. (Think Slow, Not Fast), a toy-like figurine born from the idea of a universal comfort object. Though from another reality, it evokes childhood nostalgia. Describing themselves as having “grown up with trauma in the post-human period,” the artists use T.S.N.F. to channel playfulness as a response to pain.

Leah Ying Lin and Anna Danyang Song both explore the interplay between humans, nature, and machines, but in distinct ways. Lin’s chrome and glass flowers reflect on life’s fragility and the tension between nature’s cycles of rebirth and the limits of human technology. Her work contrasts the ephemeral and the eternal. Song, by contrast, uses ceramic and glass techniques—hand-building, blowing, and 3D printing—to explore human connection. Her hybrid vessels, filled with clustered spheres, suggest miniature societal structures formed through material resistance and transformation.

Simultaneously poetic and critical, the works in this exhibition invoke both the fragility and absurdity of our collective aspirations. The sculptures oscillate between sincerity and satire. They are crafted to appear humble, even charming, while probing the violent legacies of exploration. This layered ambiguity mirrors the hybridities of diaspora—where meanings shift, materials translate, and contradiction becomes generative.

To learn more, click here.

Installation view, Solid Gold, November 16, 2024–July 6, 2025. Photo by Paula Abreu Pita

Solid Gold
Closing Sunday, July 6, 2025
Member Morning: Saturday, July 5, 10-11am
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing and Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, 5th Floor

Don’t miss your last chance to experience Solid Gold before it closes on Sunday, July 6! Presented in celebration of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary, this dazzling exhibition brings together over 400 works—from iconic pieces in the Museum’s collection to extraordinary international loans. Highlights include fashion masterpieces, rare coins, radiant jewelry, sculpture, and painting—all united by the timeless allure of gold.

Behold the majesty of gold in a shimmering exhibition dedicated to the element that has inspired countless works of art, fashion, film, music, and design. As a material and a color, gold has symbolized beauty, honor, joy, ritual, spirituality, success, and wealth throughout history. It has also taken on myriad forms: from millennia-old depictions of an idealized world to opulent 13th- and 14th-century Italian altarpieces and intricate Japanese screens, to contemporary artwork and haute couture marvels. With a sweeping range of objects and a global perspective, this exhibition traces the many odysseys of the metal that has influenced cultures and legacies worldwide.

While celebrating the seductive magic of this luminous material, the exhibition also confronts darker histories, inviting frank discussions about the human and environmental costs of extracting gold ore from the earth. Solid Gold will immerse you in one of humankind’s most dazzling obsessions.

Members can enjoy an exclusive morning viewing on Saturday, July 5!

To explore the exhibition and watch an in-depth video, click here.

Kunisada (1786 – 1865), Burning Mosquitos, c. 1818, woodblock print, 15.37 x 10.25 in (39.04 x 26.04 cm)

Dreaming of Japan in the Summer…
New Midsummer Acquisitions
Summer 2025

The Art of Japan is pleased to announce a new selection of exquisite Japanese prints now available online on their site! This midsummer offering spans the 18th to 20th centuries and includes exceptional works by masters such as Harunobu, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Toyokuni, Kunisada, Sadahide, Yoshitoshi, Kuniyoshi, Shinsui, Toyonari, and more.

Whether you’re drawn to the delicate elegance of Edo-period beauties or the bold drama of Meiji-era landscapes, this splendid group presents a rich cross-section of Japan’s printmaking tradition.

To explore the full collection, click here.

Works by Nakamura Tomonori and Watanabe Chiaki

Nakamura Tomonori & Watanabe Chiaki
June 27 – July 19, 2025
Artists’ Opening: Friday, June 27, 5-7pm
Demonstration by Watanabe & Lecture by Nakamura: Saturday, June 28, 2pm
1601 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM

TAI Modern’s first show of the 2025 summer season kicks off with a celebration of the continuing traditions and innovations of the Sado Island sculptural tradition. Around 15 years ago, Nakamura Tomonori and Watanabe Chiaki both enrolled in the SADO School’s Japanese Bamboo Art program, where they were taught by noted TAI Modern artists, Honma Hideaki and Kawano Shoko. Prior to this, both men had pursued different careers: Nakamura as an IT engineer, and Watanabe as a social worker. Drawing from their time spent on Sado Island, the artists explore the limits of what bamboo can do—from expressive lines to architectural angles to organic compositions that play with shape and volume.

The gallery warmly invites you to join the artists in Santa Fe for the opening on Friday, June 27 from 5-7pm, and then on Saturday, June 28 at 2pm for a bamboo demonstration given by Watanabe, accompanied with a lecture on the artform by Nakamura.

They hope you will be able to join the artists at this special opening event!

To learn more and view their online catalog, click here.

Installation view, Celebrated Moments and Cultivated Enjoyments in Asian Art

Experience Celebrated Moments and Cultivated Enjoyments in Asian Art at the Yale University Art Gallery this summer! This compelling exhibition, featuring recent acquisitions, invites visitors to explore the rich tapestry of Asian artistic traditions through devotional, historical, and literary narratives, as well as the elegant aesthetics of scholarly life.

Celebrated Moments and Cultivated Enjoyments in Asian Art
June 12 – December 2025
1111 Chapel Street, New Haven, CT
2nd Floor, Asian Art Gallery

The works on paper from South and West Asia depict celebrated moments—devotional, historical, and literary—from well-known tales of gods and kings. Some of the Indian paintings highlight playful interactions between the Hindu god Krishna and his beloved, Radha, recounted in the Song of Govind. Other works, from Iran and Afghanistan, depict historical Persian kings, whose lives and exploits are recorded in the 11th-century Book of Kings and the 15th-century Compendium of Histories.

The selection of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean paintings reveal the influential role played by highly educated bureaucrats and their taste for cultivated enjoyments throughout the artistic traditions of East Asia. These gentlemen-scholars were trained in the Confucian classics as well as literature and the arts. On display are imagined portraits of famous historical figures, scholar’s rocks, and other cherished implements along with representations of these items.

To browse these fascinating works, click here.

Anicka Yi, Each Branch Of Coral Holds Up, The Light Of The Moon (installation view), 2025, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul. © 2025 Anicka Yi / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the artist, Gladstone Gallery, and Leeum Museum of Art. Photography by Andrea Rossetti

This summer, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is thrilled to present two new exhibitions highlighting the richness and diversity of Asian art. Opening July 29, Anicka Yi: Karmic Debt invites visitors into a mesmerizing world where biology, technology, and spirituality collide through kinetic sculptures and immersive video. Already on view, From India to the World: Textiles from the Parpia Collection showcases the global legacy of Indian textile artistry—from luxurious silks to vibrant cottons, spanning centuries of cultural exchange. Come spend your summer days exploring these two compelling exhibitions and experience how contemporary vision and historical tradition come to life at the MFAH!

Anicka Yi: Karmic Debt
June 29 – September 7, 2025
Members Preview: Friday June 27, 11am-9pm & Saturday, June 28, 11am-6pm
Caroline Wiess Law Building, 1001 Bissonnet Street

Immerse yourself in the transcendent exhibition Anicka Yi! From animatronic sculptures that breathe and flicker like prehistoric lifeforms to generative software designed to carry on her practice after death, Anicka Yi approaches technology not as an instrument of control, but as a creative partner. Anicka Yi: Karmic Debt brings to Houston two complementary installations: a suite of five of her Radiolaria sculptures and the immersive video Each Branch Of Coral Holds Up the Light Of the Moon, recently acquired by the MFAH. Both installations dissolve boundaries between biology and technology, proposing new ways of thinking about perception, sentience, and survival across human and nonhuman realms, asking us to reimagine how life—and art—might evolve, mutate, and persist.

To learn more and view all related events, click here.

Ramayana Textile [detail], Coromandel Coast, India, for the Indonesian market, 18th century, cotton, hand-drawn and mordantdyed, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Banoo and Jeevak Parpia Collection, museum purchase funded by the Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Accessions Endowment

From India to the World: Textiles from the Parpia Collection
June 22 – September 14, 2025
Saturday Members Tours: July 5, 12, 19, & 26 from 1-2pm
Tour & Toast: Thursdays, August 7 & 21 from 6:15-7:15pm 
Audrey Jones Beck Building, 5601 Main Street

Also be sure to stop by this newly opened exhibit featuring 67 pieces from a significant group of 187 superb Indian textiles that the museum has recently acquired from the collection of Ithaca, New York-based Banoo and Jeevak Parpia. The Parpias have, over more than 40 years, assembled one of the most significant holdings of Indian textiles in private hands outside of India.

From India to the World: Textiles from the Parpia Collection celebrates this major acquisition by highlighting a new selection from the collection, of textiles that were produced between the 17^th and the early 20^th century. This exhibition highlights the distinctions between fabrics made for the India market and those produced for export to Southeast Asia and to Europe.  The exhibition is curated by Rosemary Crill, former senior curator at the V&A, London, and Amy Poster, consulting curator, MFAH.

In July, MFAH members are invited to take part in Saturday docent-led tour tours and learn more about this fascinating exhibition. Please meet in the lobby of the Beck Building. And in August, join fellow art lovers for a special private group tour of the exhibition, followed by a complimentary drink and lively conversation – get your tickets today!

To learn more and view all related events, click here.

Keiko Arai and Susie Ferrell

Don’t miss two exciting summer events coming up at Seizan Gallery! Join them on June 28 for a special closing event featuring an artist talk with Keiko Arai, marking the final day of her solo exhibition INKSCAPE. Then, return on July 3 for the opening reception of WHERE WE ARE NOT, a vibrant summer group show!

Lecture & Talk
KEIKO ARAI × SUSIE FERRELL (LACMA)
Saturday, June 28, 2025, 2-4pm
525 West 26th Street, NYC

Join this closing-day lecture and conversation with ink artist Keiko Arai and Susie Ferrell, Associate Curator of Chinese Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), on June 28. Held in celebration of KEIKO ARAI: INKSCAPE, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States, the program will begin with a lecture by Ferrell on Ink Painting of East Asia, exploring the tradition’s rich history and the ways contemporary artists are pushing the boundaries of monochrome expression. The lecture will be followed by a conversation between Arai and Ferrell, reflecting on Ferrell’s 2023 visit to Arai’s studio and discussing how Arai’s practice challenges conventional approaches to ink painting and carries the medium into the future. A casual mixer with refreshments will follow the talk. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear Arai share insights into her practice and experience her exhibition on its final day!

To RSVP, click here.

 

Yasushi Ikejiri, Beneath an Abandoned Passenger Car, 2024, oil and acrylic on canvas, 39.4 x 31.6 x 1.2 in (100 x 80.3 x 3 cm)

WHERE WE ARE NOT
Yasushi Ikejiri, James Isherwood, Tom Nakashima, Danielle Winger
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 3, 5-7pm
July 3 – August 23, 2025
(Summer Holiday Closure: August 10-18)
525 West 26th Street, NYC

Seizan Gallery is also pleased to present the summer group exhibition WHERE WE ARE NOT, featuring works by Yasushi Ikejiri, James Isherwood, Tom Nakashima, and Danielle Winger. On view from July 3 through August 23, 2025 (with a holiday closure from August 10 to 18), the exhibition brings together four distinct but thematically convergent practices that envision landscapes largely devoid of living beings—prompting reflection on place, memory, and the quiet traces humanity leaves behind.

Yasushi Ikejiri, drawing influence from landscape painters like Ivan Shishkin and Edward Hopper, captures overlooked corners of Tokyo with meticulous realism and vivid color. His hauntingly still scenes—recently inspired by Mimei Ogawa’s The Chocolate Candy Angel—depict empty parks and streets strewn with candy wrappers, evoking a quiet, melancholic sense of absence.

James Isherwood paints architectural landscapes where human presence is felt but unseen. Using vivid, surreal color and gestural layers, his dreamlike scenes evoke Hopper and Hockney, yet infused with surrealism. His layered, gestural works conjure scenes that are both familiar and uncanny, blurring the line between reality and imagination.

Tom Nakashima’s work, spanning painting, printmaking, collage, and digital media, explores landscapes shaped by memory and cultural legacy. His meditative scenes, often centered on natural or architectural forms, evoke quiet reflection. His SEIZAN Gallery debut features Hanford K East (20XX), a monumental work inspired by a building at the decommissioned Hanford nuclear site, revealing the hidden histories within abandoned structures.

Danielle Winger paints emotionally charged landscapes inspired by German Romanticism. Through bold brushwork and vivid color, she transforms mountains, forests, and deserts into metaphors for solitude, transcendence, and memory.

To learn more, click here.