Patrick Parrish Gallery is pleased to present Leaping Objects, a selection of objects from Japan in bronze, bamboo, wood, and fiber, curated by Kyoto-based gallery Mirabilia Arts. These abstract and sensuous works trace the creative imagination and unmatched hand skill of artists making deep inquiries into the quality and potentiality of their materials. Their works have a deep-breathing economy, leaping age-old forms, motifs, and concepts directly into the contemporary experience.

Bamboo art of Japan is a special focus. In 2018, Japanese bamboo was featured in widely celebrated special exhibitions at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exquisite Musée Tomo in Tokyo, and Paris’s Musée du Quai Branly. Bamboo is a protean plant and medium—at once sculptural, architectural, and brilliantly organic—that has long attracted artists of uncommon aesthetic imagination and incomparable technical skill.

Leaping Objects also features a set of richly patinated and sculpturally explorative bronze vases, a collection of hanging flower vessels, and the abstract color fields of several Japanese boro textiles.

Featured artists include Jiro Yonezawa (b. 1956), whose bold works of bamboo are currently exhibited at the Musée du Quai Branly, Masuo Ikeda (1934-1997), the first Japanese solo exhibition at NY MoMA, and Nakajima Yasumi II (1905-1988) and Hasuda Shogoro (1915-2010), great innovators in sculptural bronze vessels.