Mari Funaki

I look at the work by Mari Funaki, year 2006. Black steel. White gold. This duotone is restrained. There is not much to report about bright colorfulness. This is different with the shapes. They are expressive; they stretch their long antennas; stand on spiky legs. Lightning flashes and crackles. Sparks fly. Backs bend. Whipped by the wind round and jagged wheels are flying through the air. Sheets and cubes precariously lean onto each other. Barely touching, unstable, fragile. Edged fragments of tubes thrust into each other, intertwine emphatically, nestled, convoluted, wedged. As if a cyclone had ripped apart a city made from tin and re-configured it anew. The energy and power of deconstruction are visible. Chaos after the disaster?

No. Many things devolve upon the artist but nothing is incidental. Nothing is arbitrary. The re-structuring hand, the mindful arrangement, the organizing mind – that all speaks explicitly from these shapes. Despite this expressiveness, every detail is wanted, thought through and considered. A continuous flow becomes visible and readable. A stringent aesthetic imparts the dark, injured, fragmented and finally finely skilled, built and erected on a willful beauty – an unwieldy elegance.

Is this architecture, sculpture or three dimensional cubist calligraphy? 


excerpt of the text of the catalogue: Cubist calligraphy ?  by Otto Künzli