BAMBOO ART BENDS MINDS,
Feeling stressed out? The exhibition “Modern Twist: Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Art” offers an antidote, full of intriguing objects that ask nothing more than to be admired for their beauty and human ingenuity.
As an added plus, the show occupies the upstairs galleries at Asia Society Texas Center, architect Yoshio Taniguchi’s zen masterpiece — one of the most exquisite and calming environments in Houston.
Curated by Andreas Marks, director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, Calif., where the show originated, “Modern Twist” features 38 radically unique works by 17 artists, including a few who haven’t exhibited previously in the U.S.
“Contemporary bamboo art doesn’t pop up on the radar as much as Japanese photography, video and performance art,” Asia Society curator Bridget Bray said.
Bamboo is revered throughout Asian culture. Because it bends but never breaks, it’s considered a “natural teacher” of personal values to be cultivated. That toughness also makes it a notoriously difficult art medium to master.
Bamboo art originated with craftsmen who made baskets for Buddhist celebrations in Japan. Later, a basket became one of the three important elements of tea-ceremony décor, along with beautiful painting and flower arrangement.
In recent decades, bamboo art has reached a Peter Voulkos moment, Bray said. “In the same way Voulkos moved ceramics from the realm of useful objects to sculpture, these artists are making sculptures that in no way function as baskets. We’ve crossed the Rubicon.”
The oldest piece on display — Tanabe Chikuunsai III’s “Sky,” dates to 1966 but looks as if it could have been made yesterday. It resembles a mushroom — or perhaps a mushroom cloud, if you must work your brain that way and think a minute about the title.
Other sculptures could fool you into thinking they’re made of wire or spider webs. And the material gets woven into all manner of compelling shapes — musical staffs, samurai vests, birds and volcanoes.
Among 10 lyrical pieces by the versatile perfectionist Uematsu Chikuyu are the standouts “Sound of the Cello,” a wall-dependent sculpture that curves like sound waves and incorporates knots that suggest musical notes, and “Moon Rise on Autumn Fields,” a bowllike form whose curvy strips mimic swaying grasses.
Bray isn’t just awed by the expressive beauty. She understands the painstaking process and technical difficulties involved.
These artists don’t buy bamboo at Home Depot, she said, grinning. “They’re going to a certain bamboo forest or groves they know have a particular type or quality of the material, selecting the bamboo they want;,bringing it home to their studios and letting it season for a number of months or years. Once it’s ready, they go through another process of splitting it, paring it down, clean- ing it up and preparing it for sculpture.”
These masters can braid impossibly thin strips and create sinuous undulations that evoke rippling water. Their extreme virtuosity extends even to the lacquering techniques they use to add or enhance natural colors or accentuate the grain of material that is humble at heart. (Bamboo is not wood; it’s related to grass.)
Bray also appreciates the artists’ humor.
“They take their work very seriously, but they’re not taking themselves so seriously,” she said, pointing out the vase at the center of Tanabe Shochiku III’s “Warrior,” which mimics a samurai’s shoulder pads. If you put flowers in the vase, they’d form a jaunty, colorful head.
Most of the show’s artists developed their skills during a decade — or two — as apprentices. This time-honored system of advancement is especially evident in works by four generations of the influential Tanabe family, plus former students of Tanabe Chikuunsai III, the reigning patriarch.
The practice of bamboo art also appears to be more open to newcomers than, say, Japanese Kabuki performance — where one practically has to be born into the trade to participate.
In the final gallery, the powerful works of Nagakura Ken’Ichi capture the eyes first. He’s the renegade innovator behind “Round Web, Fan” (the spider web) and the muddied-up “Circle,” a weighty-looking sculpture with layers of clay smudged into its irregular plaiting that — in spite of its avant-garde appearance, does actually contain a tiny glass vase, making it a functional basket.
Those works are near Ueno Masao’s “Rotation of Ellipse Makes Two Transparent Drums,” a slender and geometrically elegant mind-bender that delivers just what its title suggests. Masao, a former architect, designs his intricate pieces with computer software before rendering them three-dimensionally.
Also in view are deceptively traditionallooking baskets by Katsushiro Soho and Fujinuma Noboru, who have reached the pinnacle of the system: They’re members of the Japanese government’s cadre of Living National Treasures. In spite of their bowl-shaped forms, these pieces need no flowers; adding anything to them would be gilding the lily.
Each of the show’s works invites its own brand of wonder. And the galleries allow ample breathing room, so you don’t feel like you have to rush to absorb it all.
“Everybody needs to take a little art break,” Bray said. “If people leave feeling recharged, that would be a success for us.”