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Where: Sheldon Museum of Art, 12th and R Streets, Lincoln.
When: Through Oct. 11. Gallery hours are Tuesdays through Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Closed Mondays and major holidays.
Admission: Free. Call 402-472-2461.
There's more to the art of Jun Kaneko than ceramic dumplings.
“A lot of people don't realize that I've also been painting all of my life,” Kaneko said. “They only know my sculptures.”
Jorge Daniel Veneciano, director of Lincoln's Sheldon Museum of Art, was one of those people.
Shortly after taking over the Sheldon last July, Veneciano and Sheldon curator Sharon Kennedy visited Kaneko in his Omaha studio.
Veneciano and Kennedy were looking for dangos — the name Kaneko uses for his famous dumplings — and other sculptures to show in the Sheldon's Great Hall. The two were surprised by what they saw.
“His studio was full of these stunningly beautiful paintings,” Veneciano said. “I eventually realized that painting was the key to understanding all of Kaneko's artwork.”
Some of Kaneko's most impressive paintings are now on display in “Play's the Thing,” a new exhibit at the Sheldon. The show features 50 of the famed Omaha artist's works in various media — ceramics, bronze, oil-stick drawing and oil paintings, as well as opera sketches, for which Kaneko is gaining national attention.
Veneciano realized the importance of color and paint in Kaneko's art after watching the artist remove freshly fired dangos from his kiln.
“Obviously those dangos had not yet been painted,” Veneciano said. “I realized it was the paint that gave each piece its character and personality.”
Born in 1942, Kaneko studied painting in his native Japan. His great artistic epiphany occurred after he emigrated to the United States in 1963.
He realized that if he approached his ceramic sculptures as if they were large abstract paintings — viewing them like blank canvases — he would be creating a new form of art.
“The possibilities were limitless,” Kaneko said.
Kaneko's interest in abstract sculpture and painting found a different outlet in 2006, when Opera Omaha approached him to design sets and costumes for its production of Puccini's “Madama Butterfly.”
“I didn't know anything about opera,” Kaneko said. “I listened to ‘Madama Butterfly' eight hours a day for three months before I came up with an idea that satisfied me.”
Kaneko's “Madama Butterfly” designs borrowed heavily from his painting and sculptures.
The kimonos of Cio-Cio San (Madame Butterfly) and her maid Suzuki are decorated with some of the same pointillistic patterns seen on Kaneko's dangos. Their parasols look like sculpted ovals.
The Sheldon is displaying 10 of Kaneko's sketches for “Madama Butterfly” and another 10 for Beethoven's “Fidelio,” designed last year for the Opera Company of Philadelphia.
Kaneko's productions are now in demand across the country. His “Madama Butterfly,” for instance, opened Atlanta Opera's 2008-09 season.
The Sheldon's new Kaneko exhibit will occupy four galleries on two floors.
The first thing a visitor will see on entering the museum's Great Hall is a 7-foot-tall ceramic head. The piece is painted white and covered with dozens of black squares and rectangles. It was first displayed on Park Avenue in New York City last summer.
“That head has incredible presence,” Veneciano said. “It draws you in.”
Kaneko's “Untitled, Painting, 2002,” which dominates one of the second-floor galleries, has a similar effect. The piece is monumental in scope — 9 feet high and 32 feet long — and abstract in design.
At first blush, the painting looks like a rainbow of vibrant horizontal streaks and lines. A closer inspection, however, reveals that the painting is full of geometric shapes — squares, rectangles, triangles. They transform the painting, adding textural variety and depth of color to what otherwise would have been a monotonous series of streaks.
Veneciano said the title of the Kaneko exhibit, “Play's the Thing,” was borrowed from Shakespeare's “Hamlet.”
“Thing” refers to the objects Kaneko creates. “Play” is the imaginative way the artist decorates those objects.
“This exhibit is going to be a first,” said Veneciano said. “No other gallery that I know has looked at all the different aspects of Kaneko's work.”
Contact the writer: 444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com
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