Lot 5348: Fuyuki Maehara (b. 1962) Ikkoku (Untitled), 2008

Ikkoku (Untitled), 2008
Japanese cypress, wild mulberry, and oil paint; an arrangement of six objects fashioned from wood and evoking memories of the seashore: an abandoned flip-flop resting on a long, slender piece of driftwood; a heavily eroded shell; a smooth gray rock pierced by holes; an oval red rubber fishing float; and a tiny brown crab with articulated limbs.
26 3/4in (67.9cm) wide

Born in Tokyo in 1962, Maehara Fuyuki had a successful career as a nationally ranked professional boxer before turning to art in the past two decades. In 1998, he received a bachelor's degree in oil painting from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts (Tokyo Geidai) and has since exhibited his meticulously crafted wood sculpture in Japan and abroad. Typically, as in this piece, he strives to simulate with most minute detail the real appearance of lost, discarded and often forlorn objects. Exquisitely refined and poetic, his replicas of humble flip-flop, shell, crab, rock, rubber float and driftwood suggest the traces of life on the watery margins where human activity intersects with marine life. The smooth, weathered forms point to the passage of time, as the crab -- a transient creature -- scuttles among debris smoothed and weathered by the relentless action of waves, wind, and beating sun.

Published: Fuyuki Maehara -- Wooden Sculpture, (Tokyo: Obuse Museum and The Nakajima Chinami Gallery, 2008), no. 25

Provenance: purchased from the artist