Tokyo Gallery + BTAP is delighted to announce the opening of Vessels Are Also Flowers, an exhibition by Kentaro Sugi, starting January 13 (Saturday).
This exhibition is part of our gallery's series "Expression in Contemporary Times" exploring Japan's aesthetic sensibilities that have been carried over from pre-modern to contemporary times by pottery, calligraphy, and ikebana. In our exploration of Ikebana, we previously held a solo exhibition by Kozo Okada in 2002, and Ikebana as Art, a solo exhibition by Yuki Ikenobo in 2022.
Flowers have always existed, but the art of Ikebana, Japanese flower arrangement, is believed to have been established during the late Muromachi period (1336-1392), particularly under the influence of the Higashiyama culture championed by the Ashikagata Shogunate. Ikebana evolved further during the Edo period (1603-1868), especially due to the work of Ikenobo Senko II, and eventually transitioned from a form of artistic expression to a popular hobby during the modernization in the Meiji period (1868-1912). This led to a lack of recognition by the state of Ikebana as an art form, as exemplified by the fact that it was not taught in art schools, including Tokyo University of the Arts, unlike calligraphy.
The 1960s saw a surge in avant-garde movements across various art forms, including the Avant-Garde Ikebana Movement initiated by Sofu Teshigahara, which was developed further solely by Yukio Nakagawa. Entering the new millennium, the art world diversified globally, leading to the emergence of isolated but prominent artists in the world of Ikebana too.
Kentaro Sugi, who made his way into Ikebana at the age of eighteen, is one such artist. Born in a family running a rose farm in Fukuoka, he studied under the Ikenobo School in his teens. After traveling around Europe, he returned to Japan to study under Kozo Harada. Having learned classical Ikebana, particularly the Rikka style passed down to Harada from Kozo Okada, who studied classical styles of Ikenobo, the oldest school of Ikebana, Sugi has been exploring contemporary expressions using flowers, holding numerous exhibitions both in Japan and abroad since 2013.
This exhibition returns to the essence of Ikebana, which is incomplete without its vessels, showcasing Sugimura's recent and new works. It highlights how he perceives the role of vessels in Ikebana.
Sugi wanders the nearby mountains daily, collecting various types of clay, much like he does with flowers. His clay works, created between the years of 2019 and 2023 during the COVID-19 pandemic, symbolize the seeds from which flowers emerge and serve as bowls (vases) reflecting the transient life of flowers. He has named these creations Kajitsu. The experssion is composed of ka, the word for “flower,” and jitsu, which means both “fruit” and “essence” or “substance.”
