The beauty and fluidity of the sea is at once in tension with the flat table surfaces that appear as islands. The islands appear solid yet they float on a tumultuous sea. Somehow this tension articulates the precarious nature of a land on the 'ring of fire'.
These pieces or low tables, as the designer Soichiro Kanbayashi of Studio Archimedes modestly calls them, were originally designed for the Monokiero exhibition in memory of the of the 2011 Japanese Tsunami. The four tables represent the main islands of Japan and are made of stacked Japanese Cedar. Many of the curves are apparently hand sanded to best exploit the grain of the timber.
If this piece speaks of the most recent catastrophe to afflict Japan it has the power to evoke others from which the country has recovered. With gratitude to Spoon and Tamago.
