Yō Akiyama

Yō Akiyama (b.1953, Japan) has spent a lifetime exploring the physical properties of clay as a material, creating massive sculptural works that extend the venerated tradition of Japanese ceramics into the language of process‐based sculpture, as well as the very geological forces from which clay is formed in the earth.

He is professor emeritus and former chairman of the Ceramics Department at the Kyoto City University of the Arts, and his work is held in the permanent collections of numerous museums in Japan and in the West, including the National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Honolulu Museum of Art; Faenza International Ceramic Museum, Faenza, Italy; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In 2015, Akiyama won the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the Japan Ceramic Society.

For Ground/work 2025, Yō Akiyama created Oscillation: Vertical Garden, a major outdoor stoneware sculpture in the form of an inverted cone, approximately thirteen feet in height.