In 2018, at the initiative of Yoko Andersson Yamano, a glass artist based in Sweden, together with photographer Masahiro Sambe and graphic designer Yuri Suyama, the “Glass Tableware in Still Life” project began, in which 18 painters painted still lifes of glassware made by Yamano. Artists from Japan and Sweden participated in this project: each ordered glassware of their imagining from Yamano and painted the objects using their unique artistic style.

 

This book comprises photographs of ​the glassware produced by Yamano and of the still life artworks painted by the artists, all shot by Masahiro Sambe in their respective studios. The transparent glass accompanied by the still life paintings is photographed with an 8×10 large format camera in the artists’ atelier (the glassware, in black and white; the painting, in color) while his 35mm camera captures the atelier in monochrome.

 

Glassware has long been depicted in still life paintings. When painters portrayed the fluid yet vulnerable glass inside their art, the glass became an unbreakable vessel, only existent in the pictures. By enclosing both elements through Sambe’s perspective, the relationship between the glassware and the still life painting emerges as a shimmer enveloped by an atmosphere from the place they stand. And so, they are fixed onto the images. Is this a glassware? A still life painting? A photograph? Are they real? Or a product of our imagination? This artbook is the first of the many phases of this unique project which can easily be described as any of the above. Designed by Yuri Suyama, the cover was printed with different inks poured in simultaneously, and the amount of ink and printing pressure were adjusted as needed. Such process bore a tranquil book with a flowing texture in the monochrome.

 

She offers the artist a chance, with their imagination, to evoke the reality of the still life which still doesn’t exist. I think of it as a sort of incantation that wants to breathe (in the literal sense of the word) new life into this art form, which has difficulty asserting itself in a time which suffers from the mania of placing a camera lens between reality and our experiences of it.

Gunnar Larsson (from the essay)

 

 

 

Painters

Junichi Ishida
Yasuko Iba
Miwa Ogasawara
Saiko Kimura
Shinpei Kusanagi
Katsunori Kobayashi
Kouichi Tabata
Yui Yaegashi

Anna Bjerger
Anna Camner
Ylva Carlgren
Jens Fänge
Carl Hammoud
CM Lundberg
Niklas Holmgren
Maria Nordin
Rebecka Tollens

 

---

 

Launch event

30 August, 2023

5:30-7:00 pm

Konst-ig Books, Stockholm

Yoko Andersson Yamano and Masahiro Sambe will join.

 

Launch exhibition

21 – 29 October, 2023

Ink gallery, Kamakura, Japan

　

The exhibition “Glass Tableware in Still Life: Yoko Andersson Yamano and 18 Painters” will be touring the following venues.

3 November, 2023 – 8 January, 2024  Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

17 January – 24 March, 2024  Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery

13 July – 23 September, 2024 (schedule)  Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto

 

---

　

Size: 270 x 220 mm / Hard Cover / 128P

Glassware: Yoko Andersson Yamano

Photographs: Masahiro Sambe
Design：Yuri Suyama

Text: Gunnar Larsson
Languages: Japanese / English
Price: 9,000 yen

Publisher: torch press
ISBN: 978-4-907562-41-0 C0072
Year: 2023

 

　

Yoko Andersson Yamano

was born in Japan 1978 and is a craft-based glass-artist and a tableware designer based in Stockholm. She acquired the Masters degree in Ceramics and Glass at Konstfack in 2007. Her art is inspired by behaviors, and have traces of the private quirks of people in different cultures and contexts. She is interested in how mass-produced craft can retain individuality, and aim to create works that stimulates people to decide themselves how they use and place it.