青幻舎 SEIGENSHA Art Publishing

Rediscover the legacy of an artist whose works remain as searing as ever, a dozen years after his passing.

Jun Nishida’s untimely death in 2005 at age twenty-seven cut short a promising career that had already been distinguished by numerous honors in both Japan and abroad. The Zetsu series, his last great masterwork, left an indelible mark on the art world with its wrenchingly powerful forms, wrought by packing powdered glaze around clay pipes and disks in an iron mold and firing the whole for days at temperatures of 1,300ºC. Fused and transfigured in a process of molten ruin and havoc akin to the explosive birth of a mini-universe, the pieces even today stand at the leading edge of ceramic expression.

This long-awaited updated edition of a collection originally published in 2006 includes a view of Zetsu No. 8 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the work has been on exhibit since 2013.

Major public collections:
Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu (Japan)
World Ceramic Exposition Foundation (Icheon, Korea)
International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza (Italy)
Brooklyn Museum (New York)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Victoria and Albert Museum (London)