This editor’s note highlights the key facts and market implications behind “Milano: Lotus Moon – Thematic Exhibitions, Orien”, with emphasis on sourcing, product fit, fabrication, logistics, or buyer impact.
Lotus Moon: A Tribute to Ōtagaki Rengetsu
The exhibition Lotus Moon , curated by Katia Bagnoli and Bruno Riva, is a choral tribute to the silent grace and strength of Ōtagaki Rengetsu (Kyoto 1791–1875), one of the most extraordinary figures in the 19th-century Japanese artistic landscape. A poet, calligrapher, and ceramicist, her long life traversed pain and wonder, leaving a luminous trace of humanity on her artistic production. The exhibition title Lotus Moon refers to the meaning of Rengetsu itself, the name the artist assumed at just 33 years old after the loss of her two husbands and children, when she embarked on monastic life. The exhibition invites the public to enter an intimate dialogue between the written word, the calligraphic gesture, and the ceramic form—where poetry and matter meet according to a wabi-sabi aesthetic, essential and profound, which draws on the Japanese aesthetic and philosophical concept celebrating the beauty of impermanence and incompleteness. Her production mainly contemplates simple everyday objects, including vases, tea bowls, and sake bottles, on which she incises her poetic compositions, infusing them with a unique style. To this extraordinary core of works—in a journey that evokes a light weaving—are added contemporary calligraphic and pictorial works by Bruno Riva and Katia Bagnoli, as well as the ceramics of Ekaterina De Andreis. For this exhibition, Ekaterina De Andreis created one hundred ceramics using traditional techniques, incised by Bruno Riva and Katia Bagnoli in respect of Rengetsu's style, so that her spirit can still reverberate in the present like a quiet light. The contemporary calligraphies are also not copies but interpretations: personal responses to an ancient voice that continues to speak through the rhythm of poetic verses and the brush, and in the measure of silence. Rengetsu's "Lotus Moon" thus reflects the sensitivity of today's artists while keeping its own light intact. The two exhibition venues and installations are conceived as a diffused itinerary that invites the visitor to move through the space as in a meditative walk at a gentle pace, following the steps of Rengetsu, who moved with grace and without interruption between poetry, ceramics, and calligraphy.
“Crossing cities, cultures, languages, this encounter between Japanese and Italian artists, between past and present, renews the subtle fabric of philosophical and aesthetic exchanges that for centuries have united East and West.”
The exhibition gathers thirty original works by Ōtagaki Rengetsu, exhibited for the first time in Italy, alongside a collection created specifically to celebrate Rengetsu's vision by Ekaterina De Andreis, incised by hand by Bruno Riva and Katia Bagnoli—not copies, but dialogues inspired by the verses that accompanied her search and that fragile balance between form and spirit that still makes the 'wandering nun' a beloved figure in Japan today.
Exhibition Details
Lotus Moon is held in Milan from April 28 to May 8, 2026, in a diffused itinerary across two venues, stops of a single narrative: At Studio TOMA , Via Moscova 25 (opening Tuesday, April 28, 2026, 6:30 PM), original works by Rengetsu will be exhibited alongside calligraphic dialogues by Bruno Riva, Katia Bagnoli, and Elena Cristina Toma with other calligraphers from Shodo.it, sometimes intertwined with the brushstrokes of painters Shoko Okumura, Laura Serri, and Claudia Verri. The other venue, Ekadea studio at Via Plinio 42 (Wednesday, April 29, 2026, 6:30 PM), hosts ceramic works by Ekaterina De Andreis and a selection of calligraphic and pictorial works on Japanese paper by calligraphers and painters from Shodo.it. The exhibition is preceded from April 8 by two visitable installations: at the Consulate General of Japan at Via Privata Cesare Mangili 2/4, while other works are displayed in the window of Boutique Toma at Via della Spiga 2.
