all photos courtesy Yamamoto Gendai
Japanese sculptor Keisuke Tanaka works specifically with wooden frames and pillars, “carcasses of wood” that are no longer living. He applies meticulous carvings to this wood and gives them new life by transforming them into landscapes.
Inside the wooden frames he carves trees, clouds and sometimes bodies of water before applying a layer of paint to bring them to life. But recently he’s been experimenting with carving wood to look like cloth. One of his latest works “Next Cloth” (pictured above) was shown at Art Basel 2017 and is simply camphor wood and sumi ink.
Tanaka’s sculptures are part of a group show going on right now at Spiral in Tokyo called “WONDERS,” a series of exhibitions that proposes to discover, each time under a new theme, one particular aspect of Japan. For volume 2 “Greenscape,” which is on through June 18, 2017, 4 creators introduce their approach the relationship between people and nature.
June 16, 2017 at 11:51 am
This is really cool.
June 19, 2017 at 7:56 am
Very creative.