" My art is related to the carnal sensation that the earth, in contact with my hands, gives me. "
Harumi Nakashima, born in 1950, trained in art and ceramics at Osaka University where the most radical of these movements, the Sodeisha, oriented towards abstraction and concept, still exerted its influence. Nakashima was never one of them, drawing on his "original work as a potter" in an attempt to reduce the distance between the status of ceramics and that of sculpture, which exists even in Japan. An internal struggle is waged between the two tendencies, with the fierce desire to defend ceramics. This is precisely the meaning of his struggle and the outward forms it takes. It is about modeling new, sculptural forms, deliberately anchored on the side of free expression and no longer craftsmanship. It was under the influence of this current that Nakashima was introduced to ceramics in 1969. While he leans on traditional know-how, he too knows how to emancipate himself from it, bypass the rules of orthodoxy and assert himself as a creator. As early as 1979, Harumi Nakashima let it be known: he is more "a mediator" than he is a potter. From the earth that he models with both hands emerges a work, the shaping of an emotion, a dream as well as a nightmare. This concern for the earth, this sensual consideration of the matter, constitutes the common thread of his work.