69. Mutsumi Takayanagi  高柳むつみ

Mutsumi Takayanagi was born in Toyama in 1985 and studied at Kyoto City University of Arts. Even during her student years, she stood out for her great talent and special feeling with which she managed to create detailed and delicate shapes that are unique to porcelain. Mutsumi Takayanagi uses magnetic clay for her sculptures, which is more difficult to process than regular clay. Magnetic clay is made from clay powder that contains metal fibers. The material is extruded from a syringe and pulled in with a magnet to create a number of unique shapes. Mutsumi Takayanagi makes her work in parts and assembles them, which is a particularly precise and vulnerable work due to the shrinking of the clay in the oven. Both clay shrinkage and glaze shrinkage affect the horizontal, vertical and diagonal balance of an object and, in the worst case, can lead to fractures and cracks. But Mutsumi Takayanagi is an artist who dares to take on the challenge, a struggle between her freedom to shape her ideas and the limitations of the material. Her virtuosity and great craftsmanship as a ceramist but also as a painter enable her to create particularly elegant and interesting sculptures, making full use of various techniques developed over the long history of Japanese ceramic art. Her objects seem to be a connection between past and future, with a design that arises from her strictly personal world of ideas and is reminiscent of futuristic objects nestled in baroque and roccoco decorations as ceremonial cords and often accentuated with high-quality Japanese blue and white paintings. Mutsumi Takayanagi pays great attention to her sculptures, which are time-consuming to create with such perfection. Her production is therefore not very high, but her works are highly appreciated in group and solo exhibitions.