Mingei Asia Now - Carte Blanche to Nicolas Trembley

Nicolas Trembley is an art critic, curator and advisor based between Paris and Geneva. He is currently the Syz collection director for contemporary art. Trembley collaborated with various institutions, Mamco, Geneva - Centre Pompidou, Paris - Song museum, Beijing and has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues.

He is interested in interactions between crafts and contemporary art as well as exhibition displays.

He organized the touring ceramic exhibition “Sgrafo vs Fat Lava” (catalogue) for the Centre d'édition contemporaine, Geneva - Frac Champagne-Ardenne, Reims - EXD11 Biennale, Lisbon - Kreo gallery Paris - Gisela Capitain, Cologne - Zachary Currie, New York.

He curated 4 shows on the Japanese Mingei movement: “Mingei are you here?”, Pace gallery London & New York, 2013-2014, (Catalogue) – “Mingei Now”, Sokyo Gallery, Kyoto, 2019 (catalogue) and “The Mingei”, Taka Ishii gallery, Hong Kong, 2020. His latest project was the “Expanded Craft” exhibition for curated by at Croy Nielsen in Vienna.

He published the “Keramikos” catalog with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, which was awarded the most beautiful Swiss book in 2021.

Text written by Nicolas Trembley : 

Inspired by the 19th century Arts and Crafts movement in Europe, the concept of Mingei (民芸), was established in 1925 by the Japanese philosopher and aesthete, Sōetsu Yanagi (1889–1961) together with potters Kanjiro Kawai and Shoji Hamada. Variously translated into English as “folk crafts” or "popular art", the name derives from the Japanese words "minshu" (people) and "kogei" (crafts).

The philosophical ethos of Mingei champions the everyday, ordinary and utilitarian objects created by nameless and unknown craftsmen. 

The late rediscovery in contemporary art of certain traditional techniques such as ceramics, baskets or weavings that were crucial in the Mingei movement allows the exhibition to juxtapose historical and contemporary works. If the Mingei movement was essentially Japanese, Mingei Asia features works from all the continent. The exhibition puts in parallel historical pieces from Japanese Mingei craftsmen with modern and contemporary Asian artists inspired by Mingei. This is the 5th Mingei related project organized by Nicolas Trembley and the first in Paris.