Pierre Marie Giraud is pleased to announce a new exhibition by Masaomi Yasunaga, opening on May 22nd and continuing through June 20th.

Living and working in Iga-shi, Mie Prefecture, Japan, Masaomi Yasunaga continues to expand the language of contemporary ceramics through an experimental and deeply material-driven practice. Rooted in the legacy of postwar Japanese avant-garde ceramics, his work moves fluidly between sculpture, vessel, relief, and image, exploring how glaze, mineral compounds, and clay can transform through firing into surfaces that feel simultaneously ancient and newly formed.  

This exhibition brings together a new group of Empty Creature sculptures alongside mosaic wall works, mosaic vessels, stone vessels, and the delicate Silence Bird series. Across these different bodies of work, recurring motifs of birds, vessels, animals, and still-life compositions emerge through textured surfaces composed of glaze, colored slip, tile, kaolin, silica, titanium oxide, silver leaf, brass, copper, and plaster.  

The mosaic works introduce a distinct pictorial and narrative dimension within Yasunaga’s practice. Built from small ceramic tesserae and irregular fragments, these wall pieces evoke faded frescoes, archaeological remnants, or fragments of vernacular decoration. Vases, birds, and quiet interior-like scenes appear embedded within rough mineral surfaces, as if slowly revealed through erosion and sedimentation. Their muted palette — ash grey, pale blue, ivory, sand, oxidised pink, and metallic traces of silver and brass — gives the works a subdued luminosity and an almost weathered intimacy.  

Alongside them, the Empty Creature sculptures continue Yasunaga’s exploration of ambiguous forms poised between vessel, animal, and imagined creature. Some resemble birds or horned figures, others suggest fossilised shells, ritual objects, or invented life forms. Compared to earlier works, these sculptures possess a lighter and more intimate presence, with ornament, pattern, and figurative details becoming increasingly visible within the textured surfaces.  

Throughout the exhibition, Yasunaga treats glaze not as a finish applied to form, but as a living material capable of becoming structure, image, and atmosphere simultaneously. Embracing unpredictability within the firing process, he allows crystallisation, oxidation, collapse, and accumulation to shape the final works. What emerges are objects that seem less manufactured than uncovered — suspended between fragility and permanence, memory and material transformation.

Balancing sculpture and image, abstraction and figuration, Masaomi Yasunaga continues to redefine the expressive possibilities of ceramics through works of extraordinary tactile and poetic presence.

We warmly invite you to join us for the opening of Masaomi Yasunaga’s exhibition on May 21st from 5-8pm in the presence of the artist.