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Lot 17
Shiro Kuramata (1934-1991)
How High the Moon
Closed14 October 2007
Price Realised
GBP 62,900
More Information
Specialist note
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Mieko Kuramata and dated 1 August 2003.
Named after a jazz piece by Duke Ellington, the gleaming dematerialised surface of How High The Moon evokes pale moonlight and weightlessness. Whilst offering an outline, the mesh denies volume and produces a sense of disengaged space, erasing the chair's presence. By reducing the form to simple cubic elements, Kuramata translates a weighty symbol of bourgeois life into an idiom of Postmodern industrial aesthetics.
'This mesh piece expresses a plane that barely holds itself up after all the excess parts have been subtracted from the board. This is why people call me a minimalist; but I also sometimes do the very opposite. When steel mesh is surfaced with chrome enamel, it shines and seems to proliferate. I'm working out a process of subtracting and multiplying at the same time. The concept of decoration is weak inside me, but, by using mesh that proliferates like a cell within the process of eliminating, I'm discovering my own style of decoration.' (S. Kuramata quoted, 1988, in M. Aikawa (ed.), Shiro Kuramata, Tokyo, 1996, p.181)
Named after a jazz piece by Duke Ellington, the gleaming dematerialised surface of How High The Moon evokes pale moonlight and weightlessness. Whilst offering an outline, the mesh denies volume and produces a sense of disengaged space, erasing the chair's presence. By reducing the form to simple cubic elements, Kuramata translates a weighty symbol of bourgeois life into an idiom of Postmodern industrial aesthetics.
'This mesh piece expresses a plane that barely holds itself up after all the excess parts have been subtracted from the board. This is why people call me a minimalist; but I also sometimes do the very opposite. When steel mesh is surfaced with chrome enamel, it shines and seems to proliferate. I'm working out a process of subtracting and multiplying at the same time. The concept of decoration is weak inside me, but, by using mesh that proliferates like a cell within the process of eliminating, I'm discovering my own style of decoration.' (S. Kuramata quoted, 1988, in M. Aikawa (ed.), Shiro Kuramata, Tokyo, 1996, p.181)