Tatsuya AIDA SMALL FURNITURES

Tatsuya AIDA
SMALL FURNITURES

會田竜也 | ちいさな家具

4 - 21 December 2020

Tatsuya AIDA will join us on 5 December.
11:00 - 18:00 closed on Tuesday

VIEWING ROOM
The works of this exhibition are on display in our online VIEWING ROOM.

Shopping via ZOOM
For guests wishing to inquire more about exhibition pieces or works from our permanent collection, we invite you to send an email and schedule a consultation via ZOOM.

 

Neither dominating nor showy, Aida’s form language is calm and warm, just as the trees from which he takes his material. Did he choose the trees or did the trees choose him? For more than 15 years now, Aida has been making furniture and wood works for daily use.

“Kigumi” is the traditional Japanese art of sturdily and beautifully joining pieces of wood together without any metal fasteners such as nails or screws. The know-how of joinery is mainly passed down among craftsmen who preserve shrine and temple structures. Working with the tenacity and burls of the lumber, and treating and joining wood so that it absorbs the shrinkage and strain caused by humidity, temperature, and age, demands a great deal of experience and wisdom. Only with highly skilled handwork can such joint techniques be realized.

To produce the small furniture pieces for his first solo exhibition at Nichinichi, Aida primarily used several kinds of traditional joints: tsugite (piecing together two pieces of wood to make a larger one), shiguchi (combining two pieces at a distinct angle), kumite (a joint where two pieces cross each other), sashikuchi (a joint which affixes one piece of wood to the side of another). Employing these (and other) traditional joint techniques, Aida’s furniture works exude strength and smoothness at the same time. Look closely at the masterful details of his creations and you’ll enjoy the pieces even more.

Aida has selected various kinds of wood for this show: kihada (Amur cork tree), kuwa (mulberry), kurogaki (black persimmon), ume (Japanese plum), American walnut, rosewood, and others.

Considering color, disposition, knots, and the flow of the woodgrain, Aida intervenes as little as possible with the wood and forgoes any unnecessary embellishment and decoration. The natural beauty of wood takes center stage.

Wood often rejects, and at times violently fights against, any attempt to tame it. Try to control wood with sheer force—it will abruptly break. Here we recall Aida’s own words: “You never know until you try.” Trees do not grow for the sake of humans. Even decades after a tree has been felled or sawn into lumber it retains a fierce and strong-willed lifeforce.

Please enjoy the small furniture and wood works born from the encounter between wood and Aida’s hands. We hope they will enrich your familiar living landscape with new inspirations.

會田 竜也|TATSUYA AIDA
Aida Tatsuya was born in Yamagata Prefecture in 1976. Wood has been an important part of his life since a young age, thanks to the influence of his uncle, a carpenter. Aida studied art education at Tokyo Gakugei University, and majored in woodworking at the Kyoto City University of Arts Graduate School. He tried working at a design company in Tokyo but couldn’t shake the desire to make things with his own hands. After working as an apprentice at a furniture workshop in Okayama, Aida became an independent artist in Fukushima. Following the 2011 earthquake, he moved to Hyogo Prefecture.