A New Addition to the Gallery Rin Collection: Yu Tanaka’s tsutsumimono

We are pleased to welcome tsutsumimono by ceramic artist Yu Tanaka to the Gallery Rin Collection.

Born in Ehime in 1989, Tanaka is a ceramic artist based in Kyoto.

tsutsumimono takes the form of something wrapped in cloth.

At first glance, the work evokes the soft texture of fabric. Yet the material is, in fact, hard ceramic. The organic forms created through hand-building, combined with the inherent hardness of clay, create a subtle shift in the way we see and perceive things.

Gallery Rin has previously introduced Tanaka’s work through exhibitions and presentations.

We decided to welcome this work into our collection for more than its striking form alone.

Looking at the work, we find ourselves thinking about the act of wrapping.

To wrap something is also to separate an inside from an outside. The visible and the unseen. In tsutsumimono, this boundary is quietly created.

And yet, we cannot know what is being wrapped.

It is precisely this uncertainty that invites each viewer to imagine what might lie within.

Encountering a work of art can make something we have always taken for granted appear slightly different.

This is the kind of encounter we value at Gallery Rin.

We hope that tsutsumimono, now part of the Gallery Rin Collection, will become a small invitation to discovery for those who encounter it here.

Why were we drawn to this work?

What did we begin to discover through the act of wrapping?

We have written more about the thoughts that emerged through our encounter with Yu Tanaka’s work.

Yu Tanaka’s tsutsumimono — Shifting Boundaries, Changing the Way We See the World

→ Read the full essay