Sofu Teshigahara
Taka Ishii Gallery
Tokyo

The evolution of ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arranging), from its 7th-century application as religious offerings to the secularized decorative practice of the early 20th century, was subtle. Successive schools approached ikebana with unique aesthetic goals while retaining its fundamental expressive elegance.

Working as a young ikebana artist in the 1920s, Sofu Teshigahara began to find the practice stale, out of touch with the rapidly modernizing world. Sensing this disconnect, he founded the Sogetsu School in 1927, which expanded the art form beyond the realm of flowers and traditional pottery. Applying constructive materials such as wood, stone, and steel, Teshigahara produced balanced, sculptural compositions, some teeming with botanical elements, others eschewing flora altogether.

Now remembered as the founder of modern ikebana, Teshigahara also worked in sculpture and calligraphy until his death in 1979. The range of his oeuvre was represented through a limited solo presentation at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo, focusing primarily on postwar pieces that cemented Teshigahara’s place in the global understanding of ikebana. The artist’s radicalism, passion, and vigor appeared in full force through works that transformed the gallery space into a garden of industrial amalgamations underscored by balance and harmony.

Commanding attention in the center of the gallery was Teshigahara’s Kikansha (Locomotive) (1951), which encapsulates the artist’s modern approach of combining the mechanized and the organic. Towering above the other displays, Kikansha’s graceful streams of steel connect slender wheels with a balance that indicates a skilled eye for form. These abstracted circles and lines are interrupted by an imposing chimney set in the center of the work, much like the exhaust pipes seen on cargo trucks today. A thick black coating is reminiscent of airborne pollutants, the detrimental byproducts of industrialization. Furthering this representation of pollution are three traditional ikebana arrangements. On one end of the structure, a small steel vase of bright yellow flowers and the beige-colored pampas grass held in a larger receptacle below it bring an element of fresh beauty to the work. Set directly below the opening of the smokestack is another flower arrangement, though one of considerably less vitality. The plant is a muted brown- black shade, as if the flowers have been blasted by exhaust from a coal-burning engine, symbolizing the devastation wrought by industrial pollution on nature. Teshigahara thus repurposes traditional ikebana to express worrying predictions on the threats posed by industrialization.

Among the calligraphic works affixed to the surrounding walls was Yo yo (undated), which makes use of aggressive brushstrokes performed with a loose hand to convey a sense of dire urgency in an otherwise subtle presentation. Translated into English, the characters connote darkness, blurriness, or the unknown, gesturing at the same obfuscated sense of danger implied in the characters’ form. The allusion of entering into the unknown with darkness overhead echoes sober contemplations on Japan’s industrial postwar landscape found in Teshigahara’s other works on display.

Tucked away in the rear corner of the space was Inochi (Life) (1956), a large sculpture fabricated from wisteria vines and brass that appears to depict an explosion frozen in time. Jagged spikes impulsively protrude from one another, a random and instantaneous reaction solidified and dropped on the ground for closer inspection. It alerts viewers to a sense of threat, but in time, the illusive qualities of destruction dissipate, allowing the sculpture’s texture to come to the fore. Evoking tree bark with its rough and irregular surface, and sections of oxidized metal resembling fungus, the piece reveals a biomorphic quality. This is disturbed by simulated rivets punched throughout the surface of the work, suggesting industrialization as a stepping- stone from organic to artificial, productive to destructive. These elements encompass major themes Teshigahara sought to explore in his postwar career— the equilibrium of nature and the spectacle of humanity’s disruption thereof.

Taka Ishii Gallery offered reconsiderations of the artist’s postwar preoccupations in a contemporary light, with works articulating environmental concerns that prove Teshigahara’s insightfulness and lasting relevance.