Jun Kaneko
photo: Kristi Johansen
photo: Jonathan Ley
photo: Diane Durston
"Lots of my pieces are about space…The orchestration of space… I make marks to create space in between. I'm very interested in translucence: how light transmits through the slab. In glass, it's possible to see inside the shapes."
Born in Nagoya, Japan in 1942, world-renowned artist Jun Kaneko started his career as a painter and went on to become a sculptor after moving to the United States to study at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. A student of both Paul Soldner at Claremont and Peter Voulkos at UC Berkeley, Kaneko's exceptional career now spans more than 40 years, and his work—primarily in clay—has been widely exhibited throughout the world. He is included in the collections of more than 50 other museums in ten countries, including the de Young Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Wakayama Museum of Modern Art, and our own Portland Art Museum.
A chance meeting with the Directors of Bullseye Glass in 1998 led Kaneko to consider the possibilities of glass as a new medium for his work. As visiting-artist with Bullseye Glass in Portland, he partnered with Bullseye staff to produce several large-scale works, including African Reflections and Colorbox, both completed by Kaneko during his time as visiting artist at Bullseye. These works will be installed temporarily in transitional spaces outdoors in the Portland Japanese Garden. Juxtaposed with the Garden's natural beauty, Kaneko's glass works are stunning in the simplicity of their straight vertical forms and the sheer brilliance of their color. They had never been seen in an outdoor setting before, and we were honored to have this opportunity—courtesy of Bullseye Gallery—to show them for the first time ever in the clear summer light of the Garden.
