On every visit to Paris, I make a point of stopping at Galerie Mingei, a hub for exceptional Japanese kogei. Situated on one of the city’s narrowest streets in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, it is everything you would hope for from a gallery devoted to Japanese craftsmanship: charming, welcoming, endlessly intriguing, and always full of surprises. I love exchanging ideas and stories about our travels in Japan with its founder Philippe Boudin, who has devoted four decades to the field and brings a remarkable depth of knowledge and his personal taste to every conversation.
This visit was particularly special, thanks to a solo exhibition by Tanabe Chikuunsai IV, one of Japan’s most celebrated bamboo artists, renowned for his monumental installations in museums and fashion houses such as Loewe and Gucci. Entitled Symbiosis – Animism, the exhibition reveals how he has expanded the language of traditional basket-making into contemporary sculpture. Aside from his installations, which have come to reshape our experience of space and architecture, his intimate sculptures—the gems of this exhibition—demonstrate the expressive possibilities of bamboo on a smaller scale.
Visiting his studio in Sakai, outside Osaka, was a memorable experience. Set within the family home, where three generations live and work, it offers a window into the continuity of Japanese craftsmanship. The fourth generation in a family of bamboo artists, Chikuunsai trained in sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts before studying bamboo craft in Beppu and continuing his education under his father. His practice brings these strands together: inherited knowledge, sculptural experimentation, and a deeply personal relationship with his material.
His environmental thinking is embedded in the way he works. When his temporary installations are dismantled, he saves the bamboo strips for future projects, allowing the material to take on new forms and inhabit new spaces. This cycle gives tangible meaning to continuity, sustainability, and regeneration, offering a new way of understanding bamboo in the twenty-first century.
In Symbiosis – Animism, bamboo enters into a compelling dialogue with earth. Woven loops emerge from cracked, densely textured clay forms, bringing together flexibility and weight, growth and apparent decay. These sculptures suggest an animistic understanding of nature, in which materials possess their own presence and energy. They seem to grow before our eyes, expressing both the fragility and resilience of the natural world.
The exhibition is on view at Galerie Mingei through October 24, 2026.
