Shirt Kuramata (1934-1991) is a Japanese product designer that grew up during World War II and the American Occupation of Japan. In 1953 he graduated from Tokyo polytechnic high school, where he studied woodcraft and went to work for a furniture company. Soon afterwards he enrolled at the Kuwasawa Design School in Tokyo.
During the 1970s and 80s, Kuramata, alert to the numerous possibilities of new technologies and industrial materials, turned to acrylic, glass, aluminum, and steel mesh to create objects that appear to break free of gravity into airy realms of transparency and lightness. He was inspired by Ettore Sottsass's playful spirit and love of bright color and joined Sottsass's collective, the design group 'Memphis,' at its founding in 1981.
Kuramata's works are imbued with traces of the old story of Western fascination of Japanese decorative arts and crafts over hundred years ago with, and later in the 20th century the early modernist hunger for Japanese simplicity and structural purity that strongly influenced the functionalistic dogma "form follows function".
Most importantly, are the stories that the pieces themselves reveal to us today. One continuous thread that runs through these stories is that of dematerialization. "My strongest desire is to be free of gravity, free of bondage. I want to float," said Kuramata, and this approach imbues his work aim with a kind of spiritual search. Kuramata's attempts to defy gravity find formal expressions in transparent materials as glass, acrylic and expanded steel mesh, and in experimenting with incorporating light. In these materials he explores boundaries between... read on
© 2018. All images are copyrighted © by Shiro Kuramata or assignee. The use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.
During the 1970s and 80s, Kuramata, alert to the numerous possibilities of new technologies and industrial materials, turned to acrylic, glass, aluminum, and steel mesh to create objects that appear to break free of gravity into airy realms of transparency and lightness. He was inspired by Ettore Sottsass's playful spirit and love of bright color and joined Sottsass's collective, the design group 'Memphis,' at its founding in 1981.
Kuramata's works are imbued with traces of the old story of Western fascination of Japanese decorative arts and crafts over hundred years ago with, and later in the 20th century the early modernist hunger for Japanese simplicity and structural purity that strongly influenced the functionalistic dogma "form follows function".
Most importantly, are the stories that the pieces themselves reveal to us today. One continuous thread that runs through these stories is that of dematerialization. "My strongest desire is to be free of gravity, free of bondage. I want to float," said Kuramata, and this approach imbues his work aim with a kind of spiritual search. Kuramata's attempts to defy gravity find formal expressions in transparent materials as glass, acrylic and expanded steel mesh, and in experimenting with incorporating light. In these materials he explores boundaries between... read on
© 2018. All images are copyrighted © by Shiro Kuramata or assignee. The use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained.
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| Mr Shiro Kuramata |
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