Do This: Artist Charles Ray discusses Hinoki
By Roger Kamholz in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 22, 2011 4:00PM
On Thursday evening starting at 6 p.m., Chicago-born sculptor Charles Ray will discuss his monumental wood sculpture Hinoki with art historian Bernhard Mendes Burgi at the Art Institute of Chicago's Fullerton Hall. Inspired by a fallen tree Ray encountered in central California and carved from Japanese cypress wood by master woodworkers in Osaka, Hinoki is one of the most aching and arresting works of sculpture in the museum's Modern Wing.
The conversation is part of the Art Institute's Seeing Things event series, which, according to the Art Institute's website, takes "a closer look at the history, meaning, and importance of things through art, music, dance, and words." At 38 feet in length and 2,100 pounds, Ray's Hinoki was largest work of art installed inside the Modern Wing during its build-out. (It was also the first.) The sculpture took 10 years to execute: in 1998, Ray stumbled upon a felled coastal oak decades into a majestic decay; he and several friends moved the giant log to Ray's Los Angeles studio, where it was dissected and reproduced in fiberglass; with that model as a guide, Osakan artisans painstakingly carved a duplicate of the tree - inside and out - in local cypress wood (hinoki in Japanese).
"I was drawn to the woodworkers because of their tradition of copying work that is beyond restoration," Ray has said in reference to Hinoki. "In Japan, when an old temple or Buddha can no longer be maintained, it is remade." While it was scheduled before the tragic March 11 earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, Ray's talk with Burgi, director of the Kunstmuseum Basel, in Switzerland, comes at a highly charged moment in time; it addresses a poignant visual statement about everything from the forces of destruction and reconstruction, to the relationship between man and nature, to Japan's enduring spirit of ingenuity. We're interested to hear how Ray sees Hinoki today.
The Art Institute of Chicago is located at 111 South Michigan Avenue.
Photo courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.