Panel Discussion

Comments on the Gold Prize winner

TAKEDA ───── Please turn down the light so we can look at the screen while listening to her comment.

LAURSEN ───── What you see before you is the artwork that the jurors decided to award the Gold Prize. The Gold Prize goes to a truly remarkable and enchanting work made by two glass artists, who are in fact mother and son; Emiko Tanoue and Taku Tanoue, educated in Kyoto. The title of the work is “Sange” which indicates a spiritual narrative.
My eye was caught by the sheer beauty of the golden light that penetrates the work and its surroundings. Also the seemingly casual life of many small parts that play around in a joyful but at the same time serious way like children’s ways of playing and collecting.
The gold and silver glass leaves of which the work consists are lampworked, sandblasted, kilnworked and polished.
It is organic and yet inorganic in the way some of the leaves are combined with geometrically cut glass forms.
The work seems to recall the belief of Buddha sitting on the lotus flower in Paradise, much loved and admired because the flowers grow out of mud, which is a metaphor for people’s tough lives. At ceremonial occasions at Buddhist temples, monks and children in special kimono scatter paper lotus flowers for the believers, wishing their happiness.
It is not often that a contemporary artwork in glass has a mixture of poetical radiance, exquisite beauty, great craftsmanship and conceptual originality. This is the case concerning the work created by Emiko and Taku Tanoue, and for which the jury has decided to give the artists the Gold Prize.
It seems natural that a golden work deserves the Gold Prize.