STRUCTURAL BLOOM

This exhibition is an attempt to reinterpret the sculptural philosophy of Sogetsu Ikebana and the concept of “sculpture as relationship” embedded in Heaven, the stone garden conceived by Isamu Noguchi for the Sogetsu Kaikan, through ALLCLAMP as a temporary structural system.

Sogetsu Ikebana has long treated flowers not as natural objects, but as formative elements that establish relationships of line, mass, and interval within space. Sofu Teshigahara positioned ikebana as a sculptural act unconstrained by place or material, locating the essence of plant matter not in what it is, but in how it rises into being.

In this exhibition, Noguchi’s stones are not directly fixed, but instead connected through ALLCLAMP with the use of cushioning materials. Wooden branches threaded through the structure function as “lines” in the Sogetsu tradition, cutting through space, while OAO shoes clamped onto the branches rise as flowers. ALLCLAMP is not a device for permanent fixation; it is a system that enables structure to exist temporarily. Upon the conclusion of the exhibition, it will be dismantled without leaving a trace. This provisional nature resonates with the temporality of ikebana, which is formed with the premise of eventual withering.

Here, the shoes exist not as products awaiting use, but as sculptural forms that abstract the relationship between the body and the ground. Stone, clamp, branch, and shoe come together as a bundle of relationships—between permanence and change, nature and artifice, body and space—momentarily blooming within this site.