The porcelain sculptures of prolific Japanese artist Katsuyo Aoki
Katsuyo Aoki’s sculptures look like relics from a beastly rococo religious ceremony in a beautiful nightmare. At once unnerving and enchanting, her sculptures revolve around images of crowns, skulls, dismembered animal parts—dark motifs inspired through myth, allegory and historical background. The sculptures are created using porcelain, a prominent luxury material used throughout the history of décor up to the present, delicate and dripping with intricate excess. Historical icons of power and mortality, the crown and skulls are contrasted with garish, stark-white frills, creating what Aoki describes as “an irrational quality” which expresses in its layers the contradictions and complexities of these myths and stories retold in our contemporary age.
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Katsuyo Aoki’s website
