Galerie Mingei is holding its first MINGEI BAMBOO PRIZE competition

Eleven works have been selected and will be exhibited at the Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet from October 21st through March 1st 2021.

Galerie Mingei has been championing the Japanese wickerwork and bamboo arts for ten years, and has established itself as the first and virtually only European gallery with this area of specialty.

Promoting the continued and enduring recognition of this art and encouraging contemporary creation are Galerie Mingei’s main objectives as it sets out to award an annual prize. The competition for this prize is open to all Japanese artists regardless of age, and particularly to those who use bamboo as their medium. Artists may also enter the competition as many times as they wish.

The 2020 jury will meet at Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet on January 26th.

Toshimasa KIKUCHI

The installation he is presenting at Asia Now brings together a series of slender lacquered wood sculptures that represent mathematical models, in the tradition of the famous photographs taken of such objects by Man Ray. Here, these abstract forms, hung from the ceiling like mobiles or placed on the ground like devotional pieces, display a level of skill and virtuosity that is rare in contemporary art.

The works are perfect stalactites and eternal concretions that impress with their sculptural beauty at the same time as they open perspectives to a dimension that sculpture cannot attain – that of pure conceptual forms. The fusion between Art and Science at the heart of Kikuchi’s sculpture was primarily inspired by his work as a researcher at the Tokyo University Museum where he continues to organize exhibitions and restore old artworks.

Kei OSAWA

• IIZUKA Hōsai I (1851-1916)

• IIZUKA Hōsai II (1872-1934)

• IIZUKA Rōkansai (1890-1958)

• IIZUKA Shōkansai (1919-2004)

• MATSUMOTO Hafū (born 1952)

ABE Motoshi
HIROI Yasushi
KAWASHIMA Shigeo
MORIGAMI Jin
NAKATOMI Hajime
SATOH Haruo
SHIOTSUKI Juran
SUGIURA Noriyoshi
TANIGUCHI Michito
YOKOYAMA Osamu
YONEZAWA Jiro
YUFU Shohaku

" When one examines woods like Zelkova serrata (keyaki) and cherry (sakura), one comes to realize that there are no straight lines or right angles in the natural world. The same is true of the human world, but modern life demands and values rationality and productivity, and compels us to violate the principles of the natural world. Our environment becomes fragmented and our overall vision tends to get blurred. "
Chiharu Nishijima

Opening 20th June

3 - 9 pm

12 - 16 Juin 2019

@Galerie Desmet, 39 rue des Minimes, Bruxelles

pendant AAB 2019

During Salone del Mobile 2019 - Via Gesù, 17 - Milano @ Renzo Freschi Gallery

Tradition and simple form

Since the 8th century, finely made bamboo baskets have been used in Buddhist ceremonies and later in the Japanese tea ceremony. Master-apprentice lineages that enabled the knowledge required to create them to be passed down through the ages were established early on.

During the twentieth century, individual kagoshi (basket makers) reinterpreted these traditions to create imaginative forms and vases for the ikebana, the art of flower arrangements. Now, in the twenty-first century, a new generation of artists, from diverse backgrounds, are creating an amazing variety of artworks that can be appreciated as contemporary sculptural forms.

The Mingei Gallery is pleased to present its collection of Japanese baskets whose creations range from the late 19th century to the present day.

Chikuunsai IV creates two kinds of bamboo works. The first, which are made using traditional techniques transmitted from generation to generation, are functional objects destined for used in ikebana and in the tea ceremony. His other works fall squarely into the realm of contemporary creation. Tanabe Chikuunsai IV is an artist of his time who expresses his individuality through various organic sculptural forms. Both his functional and contemporary works are part of many notable international private and public collections.

He has been awarded many prizes in Japan as well as abroad, and was the recipient of the prestigious Lloyd Cotsen Bamboo Prize in the United States in 2007.

Since 2015, he has produced a number of monumental installations: at the MET in New York, the Japan House in Sao Paulo, Takashimaya in Tokyo, the MNAA-Guimet in Paris, the Château de la Celle-Saint-Cloud, and the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire (through November 2018), among other places.

A catalog with photographs by Japanese artist Tadayuki Minamoto will accompany the exhibition.