Notice Forest series - burger king bag

i first spied yuken teruya's work in a home. i was sitting talking to the collector and across the room i saw this bag - and did it have a tree IN it? when there was a break in our conversation i walked over to it and was instantly smitten. there was a tree. painstakingly carved from the top of the bag and then gingerly dropped into the interior.

the whole piece and what it encompassed - a tree makes a bag, the bag makes a tree; turning an ordinary object into something so captivating; looking beyond traditional materials for art-making.

this was a moment where i seriously thought - damn. i wish i had come up with that idea !  (See more after the jump)!

Notice Forrest series - Louis Vuitton bag

of course the piece changes as you think about the type of bag being used. in that first image it's a burger king bag - fast food, consumer culture, trash....

he's also done some with high end designer bags... the meaning shifts to include thoughts on class. a whole other kind of consumption. the haves and the havenots.

Notice Forrest series - Marc Jacobs bag

apparently he models each tree from a REAL urban landscape tree  - reproducing it in this environment.

Notice Forrest series - tops of bags

that idea interests me as it also starts to talk about conservation [can a tree be saved for posterity this way?] and our weird way of placing nature in urban areas. the potential variation in color, style, etc. from the bag choice alone is mind boggling. not to mention the top view is just as interesting as the peering inside view.

corner forest

corner forest corner forest

when you begin to look at teruya's work as a whole there are some constants. a desire to use mundane and quotidian objects and raise them to new heights. to make beauty and delicacy out of something that is most certainly not beautiful and delicate.

my vote, @ Shoshoyna Wayne Gallery

a desire to relate his own personal experience - his okinawan experience [born there] - to a greater world. to a world that has some consumerist global truths perhaps? above he created stencils from cereal boxes to spray paint traditional japanese [and particularly from okinawa - bingata patterning] patterns on the wall [he also did this IN the street with shoe box stencils. another layer of meaning.]

minding my own business, 2011

a desire to heal? a response to tragedy. life "sprouting" from the news.

green economy, 2010

a desire to make a political statement.

earn lots of money - no need to send any letters, just send the money home first, 2009-2010 video + cardboard boxes

a desire to show life cross-culturally - how indeed we are on similar journeys. how life in a city - particularly for the working class can be both different and same.

for this body of work [one i would really like to see] yuken explains [taken from his website]:

earn lots of money, no need to send any letters, just send the money home first, 2009-2010 video + cardboard boxes

This 5 channel video installation documents the journey of small Origami boats, fitted with national flags of various countries, as they travel along the gutter of a street in Brooklyn’s low-rent neighborhood of many South American immigrants, Bushwick, where the artist used to reside. The movies are projected on empty cardboard boxes scattered in the space.

earn lots of money, no need to send any letters, just send the money home first, 2009-2010 video + cardboard boxes

One video shows a team of firemen opening a fire hydrant to flood the street, a neighborhood substitute for air-conditioning. Another shows a kid picking one of the paper boats out of the water. Those lively little boats carry the life stories of the immigrants, and also the artist himself’s history of moving from Japan to the United States.

earn lots of money, no need to send any letters, just send the money home first, 2009-2010 video + cardboard boxes

The title of the piece references a common early 20th century colloquial farewell at the Okinawa docks as ships carried family members away to foreign lands in search of a better life.

yeah. this is for me. here's another time where i'm having a hard time deciding what piece to add to my collection. i think i'm going to settle on a forest piece only because i HAVE seen those in person so i know how magical they actually are. how to choose a tree though? color? type of bag? shape of the tree?






i think this chanel one suits me just fine. what's not to love?

keep track of my growing collection on pinterest.
until next time. happy art looking.... and halloween !