Sunrise Over Haku Mountain • 2023

“Sunrise over Haku Mountain” is a hybrid work. Its reading can be multiple and understood both from a temporal and spatial point of view. It embodies the reinterpretation of an ancient know-how and generates a mixed space between Orient and Occident.

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The structure of the work was inspired by the prayer nuts made at the beginning of the 16th century by the master miniaturists of northern Europe. These small boxwood spheres entirely carved with rosettes and which contain very detailed miniature religious scenes were used at the beginning of the Renaissance as an aid to personal devotion. Their owners, letting their minds wander among the profusion of ornaments and narrative scenes, used them as a support for religious meditation. With "Sunrise over Haku Mountain", I wanted to create a similar object that invites the viewer to recenter and find calm by letting their gaze wander through the parchment’s landscapes that make up my work. He will be able to travel in thought and admire the sunrise on Mount Haku, one of the three sacred mountains of Japan, and admire the carps in Komatsu City's Rojo Park.

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The outer structure of the work is made up of two half-spheres made from several sheets of molded goatskin parchment and hemstitched with a scalpel and leather punches. They come to rest on two turned boxwood rings decorated with ebony and curly maple fillets. In echo to the interior decoration of the work, we can make out through the openwork cupolas a golden sun, which prefigures the central element of the sculpted landscape.

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On opening this globe, we discover two scenes entirely made of tinted goatskin parchment, enhanced with gold, copper and silver leaves.

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Both a tribute to the know-how of European master miniaturists of the early 16th century and an ode to the beauty of Mount Haku and the Koi carps in Rojo Park, this work invites meditation and introspection.