Toshimasa Kikuchi : Mathematical Objects

Kikuchi, Toshimasa (ART); Makariou, Sophie

ISBN 10: 2956615033 / ISBN 13: 9782956615033

Published by John Adamson, 2021

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 43692418-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Toshimasa Kikuchi : Mathematical Objects
• Publisher: John Adamson
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 2956615033
• ISBN 13: 9782956615033
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The work of the Japanese sculptor Toshimasa Kikuchi (born in 1979) is somehow bewilderingly obvious. Trained in the restoration of Buddhist statues, mastering to perfection the techniques of classical Japanese statuary, he carves pure forms in wood – geometric, hydrodynamic or figurative. His scientific repertory is timeless (mathematics, engineering, natural history), but his preferred materials and techniques are firmly grounded in tradition (Japanese hinoki cypress, urushi lacquer, kinpaku gold leaf). The installation he presents for his Carte Blanche at the Guimet Museum, Paris, brings together a series of slender sculptures in lacquered wood of mathematical objects, in the tradition of the celebrated photographs that Man Ray took of them. These abstract forms, hanging from the ceiling like mobiles or laid on the floor like devotional objects, take shape through a virtuosity and craftsmanship seldom found in contemporary art. The book is lavishly illustrated by the Japanese photographer Tadayuki Minamoto, who has been able to capture the magnificence of the mathematical abstraction of the works of Kikuchi; by photographs and paintings by Man Ray; and with fascinating mathematical objects from the Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris, photographed by the French photographer Bertrand Michau.

It is essential reading for lovers of surrealism and of the early years of 20th-century abstraction as well as for all who are intrigued by the close relationship between art and mathematics.

Text in English and French.

About the Author

Sylvie Benzoni-Gavage is a mathematician, professor at Université Claude-Bernard Lyon I, and director of the Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris; Sophie Makariou is president of the Guimet Museum, Paris; Kei Osawa is a researcher in art history and in aesthetics (University Museum, University of Tokyo); Édouard Sebline is an independent scholar specializing in Man Ray, Dada and surrealism