“What people really want from a designer is atmosphere. You could go about that in an additive fashion; in interior design, for example, you could do it by changing the walls, then the floor, then adding furniture, and so forth. But that leads to a superficial design lacking much freshness or excitement. To me it is important to approach design by changing things at a very basic level.”
—Yoshioka TokujinSensing Nature
Sensing Nature, three contemporary artists – Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro and Kuribayashi Takashi – presented works around the theme of Rethinking the Japanese Perception of Nature. The irony of its being situated on the 52nd floor of a Tokyo skyscraper was not lost with Kuribayashi’s Wald aus Wald (Forest from Forest), which used Japanese paper, a material that comes from trees, to build seemingly weightless papier mâché trees that were elevated from the ground and only visible through several individual manholes. Straddling subterranean and aboveground realms, the work invited visitors to penetrate its floor-ceiling so they were at once inside and outside, above and below.
