A monumental three-part sculptural work, titled Zetsu # 8 (Absolute/End # 8), by Nishida Jun was recently acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and installed in a gallery in late May. The work exemplifies the unique approach Nishida took towards ceramic art.
Nishida Jun’s radical approach to both building and firing, has defined him as a tectonic figure in the clay art world. In a process he termed "excavating," Nishida fired his enormous single matrixes within large kiln-filling metal coffers. These exceedingly heavy and massive forms, once excavated from their metal “containers” were then split into sections of varying dimensions and scale, revealing rough, jagged porcelain, molten accumulations of vitreous clay and glass glaze, and powdery interiors often with embedded sections of mold-cast porcelain forms.
Born in Osaka, Nishida moved to Kyoto to pursue his B.F.A and then M.F.A. in ceramics at Kyoto Seika University, where he assisted in the ceramics studio. After graduation, he worked as a part-time lecturer while independently pursuing his experimental sculptural processes. At the time of his shockingly premature death in 2005 during a kiln-construction accident in Bali, he had already created a monumental body of work, winning important prizes and some work entering the collections of prominent Japanese museums. Since his death, major sculptures have been recently acquired by American museums including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which has a major triptych on permanent view in its own room. Despite his youth, Nishida was undeniably a true master of his medium.