Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Taiichiro Yoshida’s Hot-metal Treated Sculptures of Animals

Decorative metalworking in Japan has a long history that began sometime in the fourth to fifth centuries with skills passed down through the generations. Tokyo based sculptor Taiichiro Yoshida conforms to century old traditions in his hot-metal treated sculptures of flower-encrusted animals. Snow monkeys, rabbits, cats, and birds like sparrows and doves are just a few of the animals that he represents in his work, coated with layers of intricate metal florals and feathers in various colors.

Decorative metalworking in Japan has a long history that began sometime in the fourth to fifth centuries with skills passed down through the generations. Tokyo based sculptor Taiichiro Yoshida conforms to century old traditions in his hot-metal treated sculptures of flower-encrusted animals. Snow monkeys, rabbits, cats, and birds like sparrows and doves are just a few of the animals that he represents in his work, coated with layers of intricate metal florals and feathers in various colors.

The metals in Yoshida’s work, such as copper and silver, are naturally occurring in nature, creating a connection between his natural materials and his subjects. Each piece begins as a plasticine base, then covered in metal work flowers and other elements, created by hand-forging tools like an Otafuku Hammer for flattening the hot metal. The beating method includes beating the metal ingot or plate into a specific form which the desired shape is fashioned before it cools.

Yoshida considers his use of coloring to be one of the most important aspects of his metal craft. His metal carving handiwork is enhanced by his color techniques, enacted by super-cooling the heated metal at precise stages. There are four characteristic colors in his work: white, pink, pinkish brown, and copper patina. He admits the work can be difficult and tedious to produces, a mastery that earned him the 2015 Taro Okamoto Contemporary Award for his meticulous handiwork.

The result is beautiful and at times disturbing, particularly in Yoshida’s works that incorporate the original animal’s skull or bones. Yoshida’s macabre details are somewhat surprising in a country where flowers are highly praised in such a refined art like ikebana, or flower arrangement. Flowers such as the sakura and chrysanthemum are national symbols of Japan, and such flowers have the power to invoke powerful emotions.

Hanakotoba, or the language of flowers, is not something that goes unnoticed by the artist. In his sculpture “Flower Cat”, Yoshida speicifically applies the motif of spring flowers to express the cat’s feelings of love. It’s one of his more abstract pieces, recalling the work Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s figures covered in spring flowers, as well as François Pompon’s modern stylized animalier sculpture. Though Yoshida’s work is in many ways a return to traditional tastes, his experimentation in colors, detailing and abstraction blurs the line between ancestral and contemporary.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Using steel rebar, chicken wire, plaster, wax, acrylics, and other materials, Rebecca Ackroyd constructs pieces that play in both figurative and abstract themes. The artist’s practices moves between mixed-media painting and sculpture, the latter producing beings exploring space and gender.
Pittsburgh based artist David Burton's striking assemblages are made out of vintage toys and other found objects as he happens upon them, layered into puzzle-like creations. His near-obsessive layering of objects recalls the work of other assemblage artists, like Kris Kuksi, infused with a sense of playfulness despite their dark color. Sourced everywhere from local thrift shops to his walks on the beach, the objects that Burton features are also his main source of inspiration.
With his signature “Ohlala” character, Reen Barrera creates both mixed-media paintings and windable toys. The figure moves between cutesy and menacing iterations, appearing both hardened and crudely decorated. In the moving wooden sculptures, the deceptively simple actions show ingenuity from the artist.
David Altmejd’s unsettling mixed-media sculptures subvert and mutate the figurative, while exploring our relationship to science and mythology. With works like "L,oeil" (above), he uses a robust set of materials: expanded polystyrene, epoxy dough, fiberglass, resin, synthetic hair, quartz, Sharpie and pens, gold leaf, glass paint, and much more. Throughout these forms, Altmejd creates surreal embellishments with natural and unnatural emulations.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List