JIRO KAMATA Voices

It started someday in 1929 in the Japanese town of Hirosaki with the opening of a watch shop by the grandfather of Jiro Kamata. However, his grandson wasn't very keen to enter the family firm. When turning 18 Kamata travelled to Kofu to study at the Yamanashi Institute for Art Jewellery, only to move to Germany only two years later. First he enrolled in the art academy in Pforzheim - being taught by Johanna Dahm and Rudolf Bott - later joining the class of Otto Künzli at the Munich's academy. Well before graduating it became clear that Kamata was developing a specific, own voice. He excelled in combining a Japanese attention to detail with the creative independence he mastered in Germany. Getting his degree in 2006 was a mere formality. From October 2019 till May 2020 Jiro Kamata was honoured with a major retrospective exhibition at the Alien Art Centre in Taiwan; it coincided with the publication of a beautiful catalogue. This show then transferred to Munich in the fall of 2020, and now the better part of it will travel to Galerie Rob Koudijs.

Kamata's Tesa-rings - the first pieces based on a transparent material - were already created as early as 1998, the Sunny rings date from 2005. His actual first solo exhibition in our gallery was in 2009 with the Momentopia collection. In these jewellery pieces he applied lenses taken from obsolete photo cameras. It was a play with form, transparency and reflections Kamata would return to more often. In his next series he applied colour on the lenses employing an ancient Japanese marbling technique; later on he mirrored their backsides. From 2013 he based several series on dichroic filters, a kind of high-tech glass developed for video cameras that reflects only one or two colours, while remaining completely transparent. He contained this material in silver frames and, in later collections, placed it directly in a corian base. Three years later he made jewellery pieces from wafer-thin, lightweight plastic mirror. Eventually the archetypical metal of the goldsmith got its chance, gold. It was used in a Kamata way: polished into a high shine, reducing it to colour and reflection. He combined it with composite sheets made from white or black marble and turquoise. The most recent kind of reflective surface he has deployed is that of the unfathomable, multi coloured mother of pearl.

Kamata always loves to work with exceptional artificial materials. They can vary from panels that are associated by many with kitchen surfaces, to transparent acrylics, exceptional glass types and mirroring foils that offer unexpected, highly sophisticated, possibilities. With the jewellery pieces of this artist you're never quite sure what you're seeing; and if you think you do, you're usually wrong; intangible colours, elusive reflections, confusing mirrors... Yet, each time his necklaces, brooches and rings seduce you with their unexpected splendour. Before the year is over, the gallery will exhibit his latest work; than Jiro Kamata will add yet another voice to his oeuvre filled with reflections and light.