Born in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture in 1973, Chikuunsai IV grew up within a distinguished lineage of bamboo craftsmen, surrounded by the material from childhood. He studied sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts before apprenticing under his father, Chikuunsai III, and taking the name Tanabe Chikuunsai IV in 2017.
His work builds on traditional weaving techniques while expanding them into the scale and language of contemporary art. He is known in particular for large installations that draw on bamboo’s inherent vitality. After each exhibition, the works are dismantled and the bamboo carried forward into new projects—a practice that enacts, materially, the circulation and continuity his work is about.
Here, Chikuunsai gives form to ku: the understanding that all existence arises within relationships. Venice’s light and wind, the weight of the architecture, and the presence of viewers are woven into a single structure. The result is a space that holds tradition and innovation, craft and art, nature and humanity, not as opposites to be resolved, but as forces that, brought together, become something new.
- Section Special Project
- Venue Palazzo Bembo
- Based in Osaka, Japan
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