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Artwork Description

The history of glass art in Japan is a relatively youthful one. Yet this reality is hardly a bane but a blessing, for glass artists are not shackled by the constrictions imposed on their creativity by the towering ghosts of tradition. It is within this context that the creativity of Kyoto artist Niyoko Ikuta (b. 1953- ) flows freely into her spiralling sheets of glass. Considered to be the leading artist in Japanese glass art today, Ikuta has enraptured collectors and museums the world over for her dynamic sculptures, executed with emphatic lyricism and spellbinding precision. With the artist’s sculptures collected by leading institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Ikuta’s works continue to inspire generations of younger artists. Capturing the complexity of light as it reflects, refracts and passes through cut cross sections of sheet glass, conveyed in Ikuta’s glass sculptures are the artist’s aesthetic melodies – graceful, almost musical manifestations of Ikuta’s inner consciousness, each sheet of glass cut by hand and attached one by one with a special type of glue that disappears completely under ultraviolet light. In fact, Ikuta’s signature series “Ku” expresses the Buddhist concept of reality and existence as being different yet “true” to each and every individual. The reality perceived by one person may be different from the reality experienced by another, even though they are equally true. Likewise, Ku changes completely at each and every angle, yet each individual viewer, even from different viewpoints, will still experience its true self. This is the very first work that she has made in over a year, and her works are becoming increasingly scarcer due to her failing health.