KANEKO: A Clay Legacy unites drawings, paintings, ceramic forms, and sculptures to explore six decades of Jun Kaneko’s career. This retrospective follows Kaneko’s ongoing experimentation with endless combinations of color, line, pattern, and form, showing how ideas develop across materials and change through the making process. His distinctive Dango and Head sculptures anchor the exhibition, inviting consideration of both the physical presence of his work and its effect on the spaces we share.
Born in Nagoya, Japan, in 1942, Kaneko studied painting before moving to the United States in 1963 to attend the Chouinard Art Institute. There, his encounter with sculptural ceramics shifted his practice, establishing clay as his primary medium and a bridge between painting, sculpture, and architectural form. Clay's materiality pushed Kaneko to carry his interest in color and composition from flat surfaces into three-dimensional space. His drawings and paintings remained essential to that exploration, providing immediate visual feedback, in contrast to the months of construction, drying, glazing, and firing required for his largest sculptures.
Throughout his career, Kaneko consistently embraced unfamiliar processes and technical challenges as opportunities to discover and achieve new possibilities. Intuition, careful research, and repeated testing guide his ambitious ideas into shape. Dots, stripes, and expanses of color give each work its own rhythm. Their placement draws attention to the intervals between marks and the relationship between an object and its surroundings.
The exhibition will invite visitors to trace these transformations from idea to material to experience. As we move around a sculpture or look across a painted surface, our sense of weight, distance, and scale continuously shifts. Kaneko’s work asks us to notice those changes and to spend time with the emotional reactions.
Organized by the Ulrich Museum of Art. Curated by Brenda Lichman, Associate Director of Education and Antonio Ramirez, Curatorial Assistant.
Our 2027 Fall exhibitions and associated programs are made possible by the generosity of members of Ulrich Friends with Benefits, whose ongoing support makes programming possible. The City of Wichita and Wichita State University provide funding support for the Ulrich’s general operations.
