98.  Kojima Osamu  小島修

Osamu Kojima was born in 1973 in Fukui Prefecture. He studied at Kyoto Seika University where he graduated in 1995. As a child, he lived in Taiwan for several years, to which he would also return after graduation to work and continue his studies at Tainan National University of the Arts, where he received his MFA in 2016. Osamu Kojima has since returned to live and work in Japan, near Iga and Shigaraki, which have been important ceramic communities throughout history. He often travels between Taiwan and Japan to work or teach there. His regular visits to Taiwan, have led him to create works with local materials, including the grit of old Taiwanese roof tiles. His works seem inspired by nature, on rock formations or solidified lava, eroded by centuries of wind, rain and snow, where from the cracks a glint of water is still visible. As a result, his objects seem to have been created organically rather than by hand. Yet his sculptures are not exclusively inspired by natural developments, but also by artifacts, created thus by human hand, an image he uses as a symbol of the technology created by civilizations through time. His works emphasize the ability of the medium of ceramics to reveal its origins in nature as well as human action. Osamu Kojima has the ability to change our view of clay and glaze. At first you see stone, but then the human element shines through and you see the sculptural form placed in its environment as both a part of the environment and a trace of the natural world. They are gigantic scuptures, like a mass of black earth that measures a meter in each direction and weighs up to a ton, finished with a vivid glaze that seems to flow with a glassy, mineral-like quality. He not only uses natural materials such as clay but mixes them with raw earth, ore and old tiles, deliberately blurring the boundaries between the organic and the man-made.These are layered works, giving a sense of nostalgia as they show the structure and materials used to build the land and society over centuries. But also flows from the cracks in the rocks, the shimmering glass like a river or a spring for the future.
Osamu Kojima has received many recognitions for his work. He has had numerous exhibitions in national and international museums and won awards such as the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale Grand Prize , Taiwan and the Shumei Cultural Foundation Prize. His works are among others in the collections of the INAX Live Museum in Aichi, Japan, the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan and the Archie Bray Foundation, Montana, USA.