Jun Kaneko Public Art Installation at the Martin House

The Space Between is a special exhibition featuring work by artist Jun Kaneko, set within the landscape of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House in Buffalo, NY. The outdoor installation comprises seven of the artist’s enormous, freestanding ceramic works on the newly restored grounds of the Martin House. As part of an innovative collaboration between the Martin House and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s Public Art Initiative, the exhibition presents an opportunity to reimagine not only our relationship to Wright’s architecture and the grounds but also to the experience of monumental sculpture.

Born in Japan in 1942, Jun Kaneko is an internationally renowned artist primarily known for his pioneering work in ceramic materials. His large pieces, called dangos, is the artist’s affectionate term alluding to a Japanese dumpling or other gently rounded form. Kaneko finishes his dangos with a complex traditional Japanese raku firing and glazing process that produces exuberantly colorful skins of geometric shapes, abstract marks, and drips that embrace the unpredictability of working in this medium. Many of Kaneko’s works represent years of production time due to their immense scale, which take months to slowly build up to avoid being crushed under their own weight. The tallest works in the exhibition are more than ten feet tall with walls in excess of three inches thick and weigh close to 3,000 pounds. Their fired slip-surfaces create a glasslike coating suitable for outdoor public display.

In addition to the seven large works on the grounds, three smaller works are on view inside the Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion, the Martin House public visitor center.

The selection of works for the Martin House installation has been curated by Albright-Knox Public Art Curator Aaron Ott and organized by Martin House Curator Susana Tejada.