M A N A M I    I S H I M U R A     

En/円 #2

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Tree Branch and Acrylic Board

30'x25'x10'

2022

This installation project inspired by the Japanese tradition, Ikebana. Ikebana is originally from a ritual of the Japanese religious culture to dedicate plants and flowers to the gods. Monks picked seasonal plants, trimming them off carefully to emphasize the beauty of their form. These they arranged, lifelike, in a vase. They tried to invoke the mystic power of life in a vase as if they were trying to embrace both emptiness and substance of life.

I bring natural found objects that I have collected, and trim them off, simplifying natural form as a unit of line. This gesture allows me to transform the wild form to a stylized natural form, thus, a new form is circumstantially embodied, limning the dynamic boundary between emptiness and substance. I will build acrylic boxes to fit each object. By stacking and arranging and gluing the boxes together, I will compose the boxes to create a line drawing of a meandering circle. They will be individually shut into a transparent barrier, generating a dynamic infinite circulation, as if they are still alive. This studio practice searches for the boundary between naturalness and artificiality, embracing and delineating the struggle of the division between the two.