Ultimate bonsai expression? Dying bonsai?

rockm

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Ran across these articles on Azuma Mokoto's "Shiki" landscape sculpture. The trees this guy is using are apparently bonsai ordered from suppliers in the country he's visiting. The Dallas Observer Article and gallery says he uses only the trunk and makes the leaves by hand from resin.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2...uma_makoto_s_botanical_sculptures_in_the.html
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/azuma-makoto-shiki-this-pine-tree-travels-more-than-you-do/
http://www.dallasobserver.com/event/shiki-landscape-and-beyond-by-azuma-makoto-7660960

None of the articles mention what's apparent to anyone familiar with bonsai -- the trees don't survive the exhibition ...
From the gallery explanation
http://zhulonggallery.com/azuma-makoto-2/

"Azuma conflates notions of landscape, portraiture, and still life traditions in western art to set up a striking bricolage of nature, artifice, and time which speaks clearly to eastern motifs in art."

"Seemingly a nod to momento mori, the artists’ framing of the tree with its exposed roots, living trunk, and hand-made resin leaves, unifies the natural and artifice, and creates a tense situation for viewing. Azuma goes beyond, however, and celebrates the eventual demise of the flora he sculpts. Not a warning, his creations are a celebration of the passage of time"
 

ColinFraser

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Interesting. Apparently he is also a florist, so it makes sense that he would treat it like a cut flower. His prerogative.

Orchid people always seem to get pissy when the major growers of box-store houseplant phalaenopsis encourage people to throw away a plant that has finished blooming and buy another one. Why? Will the plant be sad?!

I eat lettuce. I wear cotton. I buy cut flowers. I even had some wooden shoes once. I don't see how killing a bonsai for an art piece is any worse.

Thanks for sharing.
 

Alain

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I've seen this story and image(s) going around over the past year or so. As my 2 1/2 year old Grandson would say, "I don't wike it"

I don't wike it neither...

Not for the 'killing the tree' part, after all anything made of wood has to start by killing a tree at one point or another, I just don't wike it because I don't really see the point.
But anyway, in a general way I don't like the form of art consisting of taking a picture of whatever object in a non-related background. I know however that it's a common form of art.
 
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I even had some wooden shoes once.

Clogs are the shit. My favourite shoes of all time. Have 'em since I was a baby.

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I just learned that that can pass workplace safety standards for heat, cold, and impact resistance!

Yes, yes, they do :). It doesn't let cold through, so if you'd like you can walk it all winter long. Even without socks! Here in the Netherlands they are used quite a bit as workshoe and by farmers/rural area inhabitants (like me). I wouldn't wear 'em in kneedeep snow though. Snow in your clogs is a pain in the ass twice: First time when it freezes your socks, second time when it melts and wets your socks.
 

rockm

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You pick off all the foliage on a pricey tree, recreate the leaves/needles painstakingly with resin facsimiles, build a metal frame and shoot the whole display into space on a rocket with a go-pro stuck to it...Kind of raises the bar for non-traditional bonsai display doesn't it?
 
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