ATLA is pleased to present Dislocation Loop, the US debut solo exhibition of Shiga-based ceramic sculptor Kuniko Kinoto (b. 1976).

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Working through the enduring medium of ceramics — itself an imitation of natural phenomena — Kinoto creates stones that do not exist in the natural world. From her mountain studio above Lake Biwa, she draws on the lake’s panoramic stillness as it shapes her daily encounter with time and landscape.

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Using glazes composed of minerals and clay, fired within beds of sand and other organic materials, Kinoto forms a core that is transformed by heat, gravity, and carving. Moving continuously between her own hand and elemental forces, she gives rise to hybrid forms neither generated by human intention nor by nature alone. Suspended between abstraction and memory, her works emerge as if dredged from the ocean floor after centuries. 

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The exhibition title, Dislocation Loop, borrows from materials science, referring to a loop-shaped dislocation within a crystal structure formed under pressure or deformation. For Kinoto, it captures a practice defined by cyclical transformation — a dynamic tension between natural processes and deliberate intervention.

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Once cooled, she incises the surfaces with industrial tools, refining objects that hover between the geological and the engineered. Often arranged like improbable mineral gardens, these assemblages sit alongside fired remnants of clay coated stuffed animals — what she calls “fragile shells of memory and time.”

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Kinoto approaches her studio with a sense of experimental wonder, filling test tubes with glaze and imagining how the materials might fall, fuse, and crystallize into new minerals of her own making.​​