Mari Funaki

Book / Catalogues Monograph

Published: 15.07.2010

Edited by:: Gallery Funaki

Edited at:: Melbourne

Edited on:: 2010

Technical data:: 30 pages, soft cover, colour photographs, 24 x 30 cm

Out of print

Image of inner pages

"People often find my work very Japanese in aesthetic. I have never been conscious of this during the process of making. When it was pointed out by other people, I reflected and questioned, why do I work the way I do. If I had remained in Japan, I would never have been doing what I am doing now. In Australia I learnt freedom to express myself and to build my own identity".

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