Kobuchi

Visual Artist: Isabel Ferrand
Date: 2017
Medium: black clay and golden glaze

The first residency in Japan, at Shigaraki Ceramic Centre (Oct-Nov.2016) gave me the opportunity to experience how deeply Japanese culture is engraved in their crafts and technics. During my stay I took a special interest in Ikebana, which one can describe as the art of making a 3dimensitional painting with flowers. Each flower arrangement reflects time and space. The aim of the Ikebana art is to create a balance by extracting the unnecessary. By doing so one can achieve an ultimate experience of harmony. In fact one can say similar things to different Japanese crafts and I became interested in the cross overs; how is culture reflected, how can I combine different technics and come to new solutions.

The series ‘Kobuchi’ a magnolia tree, which I extensively photographed in Shigaraki was my point of departure. By deconstructing and simplifying the photos I tried to achieve the ultimate composition with the minimum of lines/ branches.

This working method resulted in a two-side experiment, one working on panels with reliefs, like Kobuchi Blue and the other making the branches themselves out of porcelain: Kobuchi Branches

Ma means in Japanese ' the void'; the space in between', that is what I was looking at in this series of miniture instalatllions; hnaging the little porcelain branches on the wall, like litlle scultures aganinst the blue painted patches of Japanese sky. — Ma -1 porcelain and wall paint

Ma means in Japanese ‘ the void’ - ‘the space in between’, that is what I was looking at in this series of miniature installations. The little porcelain branches are hanging on the wall like little sculptures against the blue painted patches of Japanese sky.

Share