Online Exhibition: Sonoko Matsuda x Kenichi Sasakawa Glasswork Duo Exhibition "TIME・MEMORY・SERENITY"
This is the first overseas duo exhibition of Kyoto-based glass artists Sonoko Matsuda and Kenichi Sasakawa.
Matsuda has created a stunning collection of Box of Time (Toki-no-Hako) to represent the 4 seasons of Japan, where you can see the colourful palettes and animal and flower motifs sculpted both externally and internally of each glass box. Her Toki-no-Hako are both objects and small spaces — vessels that hold what words cannot. Life, she says, is not always radiant. Yet within it, there are moments that gleam unmistakably. If we can hold even one of those moments close, its light will stay with us. Her glass boxes are created to protect such light — to cradle the fragile shimmer of time. Their surfaces carry faint, organic patterns inspired by nature: the texture of wind, the trace of water, the rhythm of growth. Each piece becomes a home for what is precious — a quiet place where memory, hope, and time coexist. She calls this series “Toki no Hako” — The Box of Time.
Sasakawa blends original colour formulations (by using recycled glass mixing with metals) and delicate bubbles into each piece. The process harmonizes contrasts — the warmth and softness of traditional glassmaking with the clear, composed forms of contemporary design. Through this fusion, his work embodies both history and modernity, stillness and movement — glass that holds not only light, but also time itself.
