Born in Aichi Prefecture in 1989, Sakai is a ceramic artist who explores the relationship between memory and identity through the potter’s wheel.
His practice begins with an awareness of finitude—a fear of death, and the knowledge that a self can disappear. As if tracing the outline of something that won’t last, he reaches for what sits beneath the surface: sensations and memories lodged in deeper layers of consciousness. On the wheel, forms rise up without planning; then conscious judgment selects, edits, and refines. That oscillation—between what emerges and what is chosen—produces objects with a particular kind of reality, one that refuses easy categories.
Sakai treats the elements of the world as ‘FLAT’—equivalent. Series like ReCollection, which rebuild fragments of memory, and SPIRIT, which holds and protects memory, unsettle the value hierarchies we carry without noticing, linking personal memory to shared human sensation. Fired clay, a material that outlasts the moment, becomes a record of that thinking, an enduring testament to life directed toward the future.
- Section Special Project
- Venue Palazzo Bembo
- Based in Seto, Japan
Are you a collector, curator, or professional interested in contacting this participant directly?