WHERE: Kou-An Glass Teahouse, Tokyo
Tea, since time immemorial, has been the totem of Japanese culture and philosophy. Artist Tokujin Yoshioka crystallized his reverence for his native tradition in a new form that gives the meaning of the art of tea clarity in today’s milieu.
Images: Tokujin Yoshioka
The minimal glass architecture forgoes the typical physical elements one would find in a teahouse, such as a tatami, Ikebana and calligraphy scroll. And it is reduced to the base of how tea ceremony is appreciated, in a way that transcends time and spatial perception – these two subjects are the quintessential preoccupation of Japanese deep-thinkers. In the open-air, observers will see the transparent installation’s poetic expression in constant flux under the moving natural light at different times of the day. Spatial cognition is thrown in sharp relief when one moves into it, as the line between nature and architecture is in absence.
The traveling exhibition, which made its debut at the 54th La Biennale di Venezia in 2011 and briefly reposed in Kyoto in 2015, has stopped at The National Art Center, Tokyo. Drop by and experience the intangible when you are in the city before it’s gone by 2021.
Address: The National Art Center. 7 Chome-22-2 Roppongi, Minato City, Tokyo 106-8558, Japan.
Exhibition end date: 2021
