Natural and Artificial -: A Juxtaposition

I am looking at the works of two Japanese artists who explore the symbiotic relationship between the living, breathing world and the artificial world created by man.

Tetsuru Kano constructs everyday plastic, glass and wooden objects found in supermarkets into mini habitats or cities within a gallery space and sets a living creature(a bird) free in this enclosed area to find that the creature  quickly adapts to the new environment for survival and actually thrives within this unnatural, incongruous space.In another installation, the artist covers the floor of the gallery with Tatami mats, scatters seed on them and regularly waters them with IV Fluid drips to find that the seeds grow into robust weeds over the period of the exhibition.

There is a symbolic strength in those unwelcome plants which are capable of growing and re-growing repeatedly almost anywhere and no amount of cutting will eradicate them. By controlling their growth, Kano makes the weed into an aesthetic object.

The context of these installations is a statement about the increasing urbanization in Japanese cities which are slowly turning into concrete jungles, where even childrens' playgrounds are made of toxic synthetic turf .

Burgeoning Weeds

Savage Structures

Nature Plan

Abstract Maps, Concrete Territories

In his works "Dawn Shoe" and "Dawn Knife" , Yuken Teruya brings  biological beings together with artificial units. He experiments with butterflies from his homeland Okinawa,Japan, in his New York studio . The work is about discovering the ultimate spot, in an artificial environment, where the butterfly can  rest. He figures that underneath a shoe or on the wooden handle of a used kitchen knife would be the ideal breeding habitat because the pupae needs the warmth of natural elements, like skin and wood, in the process of transmuting into a butterfly. With the pupae hanging off it, the luxury shoe loses its original purpose and gains another function, which is to provide this vulnerable insect with a safe setting during a crucial period in its cycle. The shoe thereby becomes organic and  causes an immediate visual switch in the audience. 

Conceptually speaking this series is about the artist's own immigrant experience, being a foreigner in USA and yet finding his feet in a country with a different set of ideologies and value systems than the country of his origin.