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| Here you can find all the press of February 2008 |
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Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Mari Funaki presents her latest designs
14th February 2008, inauguration of a new exhibition of art jewellery at Klimt02 - a gallery specialising in contemporary jewellery, located at Còrsega 317 in Barcelona.
This is the first individual exhibition of 2008, and lasts until 15th March. The following exhibition will be dedicated to the Japanese designer Jiro Kamata (April-May).
Mari Funaki, Japanese artist (Matsue, 1950), has lived and worked in Melbourne (Australia) since 1979. She studied Legal Science at Kobe-Gakuin University in Japan, and Painting and Jewellery at RMIT University in Australia. She has been Director of the prestigious Gallery Funaki in Melbourne since 1995.
Her work can be found in the following collections: Die Neue Sammlung (Munich), the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra), the Powerhouse Museum (Sydney), the National Gallery of Victoria, RMIT University and the City of Banyule Art Collection (Melbourne), the Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane), the Art Gallery of Western Australia (Perth), the Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide) and Hobart City Council (Hobart).
Mari Funaki's creative universe is inhabited by expressive forms, inspired in nature or elements from her daily surroundings. In the words of Otto Künzli - artist and Director of the Jewellery Department at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts - this is a world in which ‘Lightning flashes and crackles. Sparks fly. Backs bend. Whipped round by the wind, jagged wheels fly through the air. Sheets and cubes precariously lean onto one another. Barely touching, unstable, fragile. Edged fragments of tubes thrust into each other, intertwine emphatically, nestled, convoluted, wedged. As if a cyclone had ripped apart a city made of tin and re-configured it anew. The energy and power of deconstruction are visible. Chaos after the disaster? No. Many things devolve upon the artist but nothing is incidental. Nothing is arbitrary. The re-structuring hand, the mindful arrangement, the organizing mind - all speak explicitly from these shapes. Despite this expressiveness, every detail is wanted, thought through and considered. A continuous flow becomes visible and readable. A stringent aesthetic imparts the dark, injured, fragmented and ultimately finely-skilled, built and erected on a wilful beauty -an unwieldy elegance.’
On her work:
Of her work as a whole, Otto Künzli notes ‘Is this architecture, sculpture or three dimensional cubist calligraphy? The works by Mari Funaki are built from thin sheets, one calls this “constructed”. The metal sheets are folded, assembled and soldered. Overlaying edges are cut and cleaned. This way more or less closed hollow spaces of varying size and shape are created: containers, tins, tubes, shafts, grooves and channels, double walls and double floors, zigzag sails and folded roofs. Were these shapes cast or forged, they would be heavy’, but ‘only the blackness gives them weight’.
(…) The objects could in fact be models for architecture. Not only because there is architecture today with a similarly bold spatial implementation as we see in this work. It is the ubiquitous interplay between outside and inside in this work which is also the prerequisite for architecture.
(…) The spatial expression, the ongoing dialogue between convex and concave, the overall plastic evolvement give these objects a strong sculptural quality.
(…) It is not Mari’s cultural roots which make me think about calligraphy but it is the black, symbol-like lines and forms that seem to be created from dynamic brush strokes’.
He concludes: ‘“Container”, this is how I would like to call all of Mari’s works. They are brave and strange, strong and beautiful. One approaches them hesitantly, passing through their defences. Once we open up they open up to us. We step in and we engage. We entrust their spaces, caves and gaps with our thoughts, with our wishes, dreams and memories.’
On the jewellery:
Rings, bracelets, brooches and receptacles are the objects that result from Mari Funaki's exploration of form and space, constructed with flat metal surfaces (blackened mild steel and gold).
(...) ‘People tend to find my work aesthetically very Japanese. I have never been aware of this during the creative process. When I was told this, I asked myself why I work like this. Had I stayed in Japan, I would never have been doing what I do now. In Australia I have learnt the freedom to express myself and construct my own identity.’ (...)
>> download the complete dossier
Tags: exhibition, gallery, klimt02, mari funaki, press kit |
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