CONTEMPORARY CLAY: JAPANESE CERAMICS FOR THE NEW CENTURY
Japan Society

The culture of ceramics runs long and deep in Japan. From wabi-sabi-inspired raku wares of the 7th century, to delicately asymmetric 18th-century Kakiemon enamels, to the gilded riot of 19th-century Satsuma ware, the primacy of clay is tightly woven into all aspects of daily life. And while these traditional wares are by now familiar in the West — directly influencing the work of well-known American artist-potters like Peter Voulkos — the rich story of postwar ceramics production in Japan is virtually unknown. By introducing us to these important works of art, this handsome survey at Japan Society will go far to change this situation, making it clear that Japanese ceramicists have always been light years ahead of the pack.

Drawing primarily from the collection of Halsey and Alice North, “Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century” was first exhibited last year at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. For its installation in New York at Japan Society, curator Joe Earle added approximately 40 pieces, culled from other private and public collections, including Japan Society. Significantly, these additions comprise pieces by the founding members of the postwar avant-garde Sodeisha group (Sodeisha translates as “crawling through mud”), including the Museum of Modern Art’s rarely exhibited “A Cloud Remembered” (1959) by Yagi Kazuo, the group’s foremost member.

A thread running through almost all the artists in the show is the tightrope walk between a reverence for a 12,000-year-old tradition and a desire to be utterly 21st century. Brash glazes in moody colors, ripped or carved textures, and forms intent on subverting their function are all skillfully reigned in at the last minute and not allowed to fall into visual chaos. The manic, lacelike surface of Kitamura Junko’s “Double Walled Vessel” (2004) is held in check by a simple, perfectly formed body. Yoshikawa Masamichi’s “Gorgeous Effigy” (2003) balances architectural, planar forms with an icy celadon glaze that pools, ripples, and drips, making the whole piece austerely alien.

— Brice Brown

Until January 21 (333 E. 47th St., between First and Second avenues, 212-832-1155).

ALBERT OEHLEN: PAINTER OF LIGHT
Luhring Augustine

Thanks to Albert Oehlen, messiness has never looked so elegant. The veteran German painter’s latest show at Luhring Augustine shows him as comfortable as ever in his high-wire act, reveling in bravura brushmarks, smudges, and dribbles that fastidiously fail to cohere. He teases with but denies figural possibilities, managing at once to appear emotionally invested and coolly nonchalant.

Although he is identified with the neoexpressionists who emerged to international prominence in the 1980s, and his work has at times exhibited all the trademarks of that movement — wayward painterliness, historical references, frenzy of attack — Mr. Oehlen has always held emotional investment in check. He studied with Sigmar Polke, the pop-inspired “Bad” painter often held up as the German equivalent of David Salle, and inherited much of his master’s “attitude”: generous with effects, stingy with affect.

“Menschenpemmikan” (2006) is among the more overtly figural paintings in the show, with a shape to the left that could read as a woman’s crouching thigh and booted foot. Viewed from afar (and clearer, ironically, in reproduction) is the outline of a grotesque face centered on the canvas. There is as much a refusal to cohere formally as cognitively, with disparate scales among the marks and shapes.

In “Müllflasche” (2004), some elements are thinly rubbed, while others enjoy relative clarity. There is a sense of depth, with stained areas, and insistent flatness, with drips and impasto. Generally in this show, however, the paint likes to recede into the canvas rather than come out to meet the viewer, as makes sense for so ungenerous, solipsistic a mode of painting.

“Müsse Fresse” (2006) — continuing the allusions to food and eating in these titles — could be read as a fight of some sort between the two vaguely figural, shadowy pink forms. There is a fuzzy area between them that could read as the locus of violent impact, although the image is unlikely to induce empathy. The violence in Mr. Oehlen’s work is purely formal, limited to the impact of brushstrokes on one another and the support. The penchant for smudges, arrows, and almost belligerent contrasts of the frenetic and the orderly recalls Francis Bacon, although with total denial of the British painter’s emotional resonance.

— David Cohen

Until October 28 (531 W. 24th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-206-9100).