Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Frozen Still


 

Shinichi Maruyama is a Japanese artist who was born in Nagano.  After studying in Chiba he moved to New York where he continued his "Water Sculpting" career.  These sets of photos I've decided to display come from two of his lines -- Water Sculpture and Kusho.  
 
Enjoy these unbelievably perfectly timed photographs of water being alternated and captured in mid-air.  Maruyama describes his work in the following passages which can be found on his website in their entirety.  PLEASE watch the video at the end -- it's truly phenomenal.                                                 
 
 
Water Sculpture (The clear water photos)

I am fascinated by the fragility and incompleteness thatexists with all things beautiful.
I throw water into the air, and in mid-flight it changesshape constantly, being pulled by gravity and burstingwith surface tension.In each moment, the water becomes a beautiful figure which
can be defined as a “part man-made and part natural” sculpture.

Kusho (The black and white water photos)

As a young student, I often wrote Chinese characters in sumi ink. I loved the nervous, precarious feeling of sitting before an empty white page, the moment just before my brush touched the paper.
Once your brush touches paper, you must finish the character, you have one chance. You must commit your full attention and being to each stroke. Liquids, like ink, are elusive by nature. As sumi ink finds its own path through the paper grain, liquid finds its unique path as it moves through air.
Remembering those childhood moments, of ink and empty page, I fashioned a large “brush” and bucket of ink. Each stroke is unique, ephemeral. I can never copy or recreate them. 
“a decisive moment”, [that] I can’t fully understand... until I look at 
these captured afterimages, these paintings in the sky.







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