The Racine Art Museum (RAM) is pleased to debut Jun Kaneko's Untitled Dango #11-09-02, which will remain on display until Sunday, May 5. RAM thanks long-time

supporter, Karen Henrietta Keland, for acquiring this sculpture for the museum's permanent collection.

Jun Kaneko, Untitled, Dango #11-09-02, 2011 Glazed ceramic, 72 x 31 x 23 inches Photography: Colin Conces

Kaneko is internationally known for his large hand built stoneware sculptures. He calls them Dangos, which is from a Japanese phrase describing a rounded form. Kaneko's

large ceramics provide him with a surface for substantial abstract glaze compositions that are a lively mixture of color and pattern. This work, with its monumental swaths of red-orange intersected by rectangular white segments whose surfaces are "perforated" by black dots, is indicative of his use of contrasting hard-edged painted shapes with

rounded structures.

Kaneko's sculptures deliberately demonstrate the use of the hand as well as a Zen-like respect for chance occurrences in creation. The ceramic surface is not machined smooth. Glazes can drip and run in firing, and, as an example, some of these dots weep a dark blue onto the white background-a natural part of the process.

Kaneko was born in Japan in 1942 and relocated to Los Angeles at age 21 to study art. He has worked in clay for nearly 50 years and is closely associated with this medium.

However, Kaneko is equally adept at working in glass, bronze, and painting on canvas. His work can be found in the collections of over 70 art museums worldwide, and he has been commissioned to create over 50 public art projects. Since 2006, Kaneko has also designed sets for the productions of a number of opera companies. In all of these efforts, he travels seamlessly from one medium to another, creating works that are united by his approach to visual imagery.