SHIMIZU Takayuki (born 1979, Ōsaka)

Baku “Subjugation”

Mutsume-ami, six-way hexagonal plaiting, and intersecting lacquered strips

Trained in Beppu and subsequently under the master Morigami Jin, Shimizu Takayuki now develops a freer, more sculptural body of work, informed by an earlier career devoted to everyday craft objects.

In Baku, a pale, supple, organic inner form, woven in mutsume-ami, is pierced and contained by a grid of black, red, and blue lacquered strips. The work sets growth against constraint, breath against grid, inner freedom against imposed order. At the heart of this structure, bamboo becomes both a vulnerable material and a sign of silent resistance.