As the last guest artist for Kish this year – in a series that has included a fashion designer and graphic artists – Argie Bucot presented a collection composed of striking table art and accents, small pieces shaped from clay, the only material the artist has been working with since he decided to get into pottery 15 years ago.
Bucot was born in Manila, raised in New York, and currently resides in Tokyo. His big- city background and the bustling chaos it evokes aren’t much glimpsed in his collection for Kish. The predominantly black and white ceramic pieces are studies in Zen serenity, fluid forms inspired by three elements from nature: coal, tree bark, and Japanese paper. The pieces, at first glance, seem deceptively simple; a second glance lets slip unconventional details, structures that can’t be replicated, and finishes that become the fingerprint of each piece: nothing else is exactly like it.
All the pieces in the collection are a paean to imperfect precision, painstakingly hand-built over the six months it took to complete the collection. Hand-built, explains Bucot, is intricately different from hand-made, the latter a more exacting process requiring a series of steps. The mostly self-taught artist did away with the potter’s wheel and formed and molded his clay by hand, gave it structure, geometry, rise, and eventually the distinctive quirk that would make it one-of-a-kind.
The hand-built process adds the imperfect detail to the ceramic sculptures, be it a slant to a round dish, a "crack" on a square plate (inadvertently inspired by the big earthquake that hit Japan in the middle of the year, which ruined a significant percentage of Bucot’s collection for Kish, prompting him to start over again) or erratic curves on a series of vases. The rich texture of Bucot’s pieces also gives an imprecise yet important artistic imprint. He recreates the fragility of rolled Japanese paper (washi) with sinuous, barely-smoothened clay pieces with rough edges. He etches light patterns on a plate painted black to arouse the impression of coal (sumi), fashions subtle, sinuous waves into cylindrical structures made to look like bamboo bark, and dots a bowl with minuscule holes to evoke the hardened spongy feel of coral.
Though this particular collection displays mostly black, gray, and white, Bucot does inject some color into his neutral clay art. Back in New York, he would have pieces in orange, red, and yellow displayed in his Manhattan shop, which was patriotically called "Bahay." Aside from carrying Bucot’s art, the shop also sold trinkets inspired by the Philippines. When he moved to Tokyo a few years back to get a feel of a new market and new opportunities, Bucot’s palette dimmed, though his pieces were still heavily inspired by the seemingly insignificant, often overlooked aspects of nature. Aside from coal, tree bark and coral, Bucot is wont to find something interesting in a slab of stone, the patterns of leaves, or the rippling of water. His documentation of nature is so idiosyncratic that his pieces have been featured in New York dailies and magazines, exhibited in galleries in SoHo, and put up for auction in the name of charity.