Toshiaki Noda / Toshiaki Noda

Event: Saturday, March 3rd at 3pm. Living With Ceramics with Jeffrey Spahn and Chris Weiss. 

Please join us this Saturday for a special conversation with Jeffrey Spahn and Chris Weiss. Topics include considerations in collecting ceramics and advising individuals and institutions. MRCW Design/Build will discuss tailored spatial solutions for exhibition and living environments. Your participation is encouraged!

Jeffrey Spahn is a specialist in ceramic art and 20th century sculpture, with a focus on 20th century American, British and Japanese studio ceramics. With over 20 years’ experience in the field, Jeffrey has worked with museums, universities and private collections nationally and internationally.

Chris Weiss is the co-founder of MRCW Design/Build, with Monica Reskala. Chris received a BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. Chris specializes in traditional Japanese joinery of timber frame homes. He was Lead Carpenter and Project Manager for the construction of Larry Ellison’s residential compound in Woodside, CA. PSG is  collaborating with MRCW, who is providing a unique solution for the presentation of Toshiaki Noda’s ceramics.

PSG looks forward to the exhibition of Toshiaki Noda, Ceramic Sculpture, opening Saturday, February 17th, with a reception for the artist from 3 – 6pm. His work will be exhibited with the Black Watercolors of Joachim Bandau. The exhibition concludes March 31st.

Toshiaki Noda was born in Arita, Saga Prefecture, Japan, a region noted for its remarkable porcelain ceramics dating back to the 1600s. His parents are ceramic dealers in this treasured craft, where Toshiaki lived in an incomparable aesthetic culture influencing his studio practice today. He studied printmaking at California State University, Long Beach where he received a BFA in 2008. His printmaking education combined with his aesthetic and technical training in Japan lends a unique vision to his ceramic practice.

Unlike the smooth, consistent surface of the treasured Imari wares, Toshiaki uses the plasticity of clay to push boundaries of form, and the alchemy of glaze to explore texture. Noda discards traditions, instead expresses temporal degradation, a throwaway culture through tears, cracks, crust – a sculptural manifestation of waste. With spontaneity and curiosity as his guide, his sculptural planes contort with tension. In his first exhibition at PSG we’ve combined several series of ceramics that have textural and structural adulteration tying the works together in a unique visual field. 

In 2017 Toshiaki Noda was selected from 2,744 applicants for The New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship in Sculpture. Noda lives and works in New York, where he was employed as a studio assistant for Jeff Koons for several years. Recent exhibitions include Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo as well as exhibitions in Milan and New York.