The Japan Society To Showcase "Fiber Futures ~ Japan’s Textile Pioneers"

Written by Ando Masahashi Friday, 19 August 2011 23:11

New York City.- The Japan Society is proud to showcase a growing aesthetic movement, art inspired by extreme textile making in the exhibition "Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers" on view at the society's gallery from September 16th through December 18th. Coaxed from materials as age-old as hemp and newly developed as microfilaments, a varied array of more than 35 large-scale works will be on view. While the spirit of a Japanese sensibility and a technical virtuosity hewn over centuries is everywhere evident, what best characterizes the work on view is a thirst for experimentation, whether it be in the search for the unconventional material or in the fusing of seemingly opposing extremes of old and new. One also sees the medium of fiber used to express ideas about nature and sustainability and personal and cultural identity.

The Japan Society has commissioned an installation from Kyoko Ibe, one of Japan’s most influential paper artists, as part of the exhibition.  An ethereal web of indigo-dyed gossamer threads will sway to the breeze and catch and reflect light as it floats above the garden pool in the lobby of the Society’s landmarked building.  Ibe’s other work in the show is a screen made of paper from the 19th century, remnants of ink glowing blue-black—a palimpsest of words once read and lives once lived.  Emotion is found in reuse in this highly sophisticated object lesson in sustainability. Jun’ichi Arai, one of the world’s most celebrated textile pioneers, is contributing a show-stopper, a huge, eye-poppingly beautiful filmy gold and silver curtain whose formal simplicity belies extraordinary technical complexity.  Of a double-cloth weave—gold on one side, silver on the other—the curtain is made of monofilament “slit film” yarn, ultra-thin strips sliced from polyphenylene sulfide film with a 1/10000 of a millimeter vacuum-deposited aluminum coating.  For the silver color, the aluminum was covered with an even thinner layer of clear epoxy resin, and for the gold, the resin was mixed with a yellow dye. Finally, the artist employed a process called “melt-off,” which he himself invented, to dissolve the aluminum coating from unprotected areas of the surface.


Yuh Okano, another noted textile designer and artist active in both Japan and New York, will show a brick-hued piece from her “Water” series, pairing the natural (wool) and the synthetic (polyester) to rugged, regal affect.  The tireless inventor Reiko Sudo, known for devising “abusive treatments” in the pursuit of unexpected surfaces, presents a new installation work. "Fabrication" (2011) floats in space, a single piece of fabric fashioned from tightly embroidered “warps” hand-shaped over a metal rod into strips and then sewed together in different combinations. Sudo’s “abuse” of fabric is just one of the extremes to which conventional textile methods are taken—or pushed—in this exhibition.

For Hiroko Watanabe, the challenge was to so saturate a handwoven piece of cotton and metal fiber fabric with scarlet that, in the artist’s words, would draw out “the magical power of red.”  The resulting tufted drop of fabric is tough, dense, difficult, and unforgettable. For the viewer who encounters Yasuko Iyanaga’s bravura application of shibori tie-dyeing on a single piece of spun silk, it may seem as though a gentle breath is animating a giant, curvaceous, and ridge-encrusted sea creature. Other artists as well explore fiber’s potential as a sculptural medium to express natural beauty, including Hitomi Nagai, whose large-scale waffle-weave is composed of white warp and weft threads gathered and twisted at regular intervals into an enigmatic honeycomb, and Kyoko Kumai, whose large-scale installation—near-weightless orbs of fine stainless-steel yarn—evokes the sky and the cosmos.


The Japan Society Gallery is among the premier institutions in the U.S. for the exhibition of Japanese art. Extending in scope from prehistory to the present, the Gallery’s exhibitions since 1971 have covered topics as diverse as classical Buddhist sculpture and calligraphy, contemporary photography and ceramics, samurai swords, export porcelain, and masterpieces of painting from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. Each exhibition, with its related catalogue and public programs, is a unique cultural event that illuminates familiar and unfamiliar fields of art. Founded in 1907, Japan Society has evolved into a world-class, multidisciplinary hub for global leaders, artists, scholars, educators, and English and Japanese-speaking audiences. At the Society, more than 100 events each year feature sophisticated, topically relevant presentations of Japanese art and culture and open, critical dialogue on issues of vital importance to the U.S., Japan and East Asia. An American nonprofit, nonpolitical organization, the Society cultivates a constructive, resonant and dynamic relationship between the people of the U.S. and Japan. The Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street between First and Second Avenues. Visit the society's website at ... http://www.japansociety.org

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