Growth (white) 52

The works of the Japanese artist Masayuki Koorida captivate and enthrall through their simple yet singular designs. They remind one of molecules, or amoeba – of the smallest particles or organisms, infinitely enlarged. Chiselled out of granite or black or white marble, and then polished to a high gloss, they give the impression, with their perfect curves, that they could easily dissolve or shatter to the touch. They seem fragile yet stable in themselves, artificial and yet alive. In “Blickachsen 7”, four of Koorida’s works lay distributed over a wide meadow in the Bad Homburg Kurpark. This year, as part of “Blickachsen 8 RheinMain”, six large-scale works by Koorida are on display in the Westend campus of the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt. In their location on a meadow near the water basin between the Poelzig buildings and the Casino annexe, their colours and formal language create a clear contrast with the surrounding architecture: the sharply rectangular lines of the buildings are confronted by the organically curved and rounded forms of the sculptures. Conversely the sculptures, glowing white or black in the sunlight, stand out against the earthy colours of the natural stone cladding of the campus buildings. In this way they function as a link between the built and the natural forms of their environment. In contrast to the permanence and strength of their materials, these stone sculptures, with their titles such as “Embryo”, “Growth” or “Seed”, identify themselves as organisms in a process of being created. Their highly aesthetic, haptic quality invites exhibition visitors and students alike to approach them and spend time with them. Masayuki Koorida, whose work is internationally known, studied in Japan and later lived in The Netherlands and Taiwan. Since 2006 he has been the Artistic Director of the Shanghai Sculpture Park. Koorida describes sculptural creation as a process, in the course of which thoughts and inspiration in search of a universal language form themselves into a concept, a concrete image. By means of a concentrated creative transformation this “original content of a sculpture” takes on, in Koorida’s works, a complex visible form, opening up an infinite space for the observer’s imagination to play.