The « Intimate Conviction » project is a dialogue between two artists: the Japanese ceramic artist Toshiaki Noda and the Swedish painter Harriet Raab. From different backgrounds, Noda and Raab express their art through totally opposite mediums. Harriet Raab’s paintings produced on large surfaces with bright and sharp colors are confronted with Toshiaki Noda’s ceramics.

Toshiaki Noda (b. 1982) was born in Arita in the prefecture of Saga in Japan; an area very well known for its masterful ceramic craftsmanship since the beginning of the 17th century. Influenced by his parents’ famous ceramics dealer, Noda  naturally focuses on this medium –  as Japanese tradition requires. Unlike the smooth consistent surfaces of traditional ceramics, Noda uses the plasticity of clay creating shapes  with pronounced gestures that explore an infinitely personal texture and colored hues. His creative process includes a unique manual style achieved  through sculpting and stacking but also a game of creation and destruction arising according to his desires.

The themes of life and death mixed with this search for harmony in the distortion of daily objects that the art of Toshiaki Noda  invokes Is coupled with the spirit of Harriet Raab’s works. The resulting two-person exhibition (the first, in Belgium, for each artist) is a dance of styles that simultaneously  stimulate one viscerally and emotionally. Stockholm based Harriet Raab,  creates work that immerses us in her deep-seated intimacy. Non-academic, Harriet’s work draws its strength and power from her emotions, her memories as well as in fleeting images of yesterday and today. Without prior design of her project, the artist deliberately launches into the virgin canvas. Improvisation – almost musical – is totally part of her creative process. Harriet Raab’s painting is in perpetual motion, it builds itself deliberately in an intuitive almost furtive way. The unforeseen gives birth to this work: a movement of the body, a projection of paint, a phrase that arises… Permanently remodeled”, thought again, refined, Raab’s work is driven by a desire for depth and spirituality.

VU is honored to have been given the opportunity to host this exhibition on our platform.  Please contact us to inquire about the purchase of any of the available  works presented in the exhibition.