Leaping Objects | Curated by Mirabilia Arts

"Leaping Objects"
Curated by Mirabilia Arts
April 18 – June 1, 2019
Opening Reception Thursday, April 18th, 2019 from 6 – 8pm

Patrick Parrish Gallery presents "Leaping Objects", a selection of abstract and sensuous works of bronze, bamboo, wood, and fiber from Japan selected by Kyoto-based gallery Mirabilia Arts.

These abstract and sensuous works trace the creative imagination and unmatched hand skill of artists making deep inquiries into the quality and potentiality of their materials. Their works have a deep-breathing economy, leaping age-old forms, motifs, and concepts directly into contemporary experience.

Bamboo art of Japan is a special focus. In 2018 Japanese bamboo was featured in widely celebrated special exhibitions at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exquisite Musee Tomo in Tokyo, and Paris’s Musee Quai Branly. Bamboo is a protean plant and medium—at once sculptural, architectural, and brilliantly organic—that has long attracted artists of uncommon aesthetic imagination and incomparable technical skill. This ancient and essential art expands the boundaries of the Modern.

Leaping Objects also features a set of richly patinated and sculpturally explorative bronze vases, a collection of hanging flower vessels, and the abstract color fields of several Japanese boro textiles.

Featured artists include Jiro Yonezawa (b. 1956) whose bold works of bamboo are currently exhibited at the Musee Quai Branly, Masuo Ikeda (1934-1997), the first Japanese solo exhibition at NY MOMA, and Nakajima Yasumi II (1905-1988) and Hasuda Shogoro (1915-2010), great innovators in sculptural bronze vessels.