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King’s Studio
Square Meters features the ceramic artist King Houndekpinkou as its first guest. Talking about his gold luster technique, his admiration for the legendary ceramic artist George Ohr [1857-1918], and the power of lineage, King lets us peek into his creative mind. This episode has been recorded at his atelier located at PADAF in the Southern suburbs of Paris in Antony, France.
Born in Montreuil in 1987, King’s childhood in the suburbs of Paris was greatly influenced by the Japanese pop culture of the 90s, which led him to develop a fascination for Japan during his teenage years.
In 2012, while actively pursuing a career in the field of International Communications and no prior interaction with the clay world, King fulfilled his dream of traveling to Japan for the first time. With traditional Japanese pottery, it’s immediately a knockout.
For King, ceramics stood as a revealing material of the spiritual bond existing between the West African and Japanese cultures. This epiphanic discovery changed the course of his life and after three years of training and self-taught practices, he decided to dedicate his life to ceramics as an artist.
Today, King has developed a practice that merges tradition, spirituality and visceral creativity while crossing several “borders”, whether they are cultural, geographical, generational, disciplinary, technical or historical.
Member of the International Academy of Ceramics, his work is/has been regularly exhibited internationally at art/design fairs, museum exhibitions and biennales in Australia, Benin, Hong-Kong, Japan, Morocco, Senegal, Spain, South Korea, and the USA.
Credits /
Curated by Alessandra Chiericato
Recorded: Feb 2020
Published: March 2020
Music: Roberto Farina
Editing: Alessandra Chiericato
Photo Credits: All Ilan Parienté