Yuken Teruya: tree in a bag.

Yuken Teruya is a Japanese artist based in New York. He works with a variety of materials such as paper bags, loo rolls and butterfly chrysalises. As an artist of the miniature, Teruya uses discarded objects as platforms for creation, cutting into them to expose hidden meanings. 

Teruya’s ongoing Notice-Forest series transforms fast food and luxury fashion bags - waste products of consumerism - into artworks. The bags are turned into miniature trees by cutting into the paper walls, and suspending the trees in empty interiors.Brands such as Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, Pucci, Sephora, Le Bon Marché, Christian Dior and McDonalds are played with.

This work, ‘LVMH - Christian Dior’ (2005), portrays an existing tree.

(‘LVMH’ (‘LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE’) is a multinational goods conglomerate who works with many of the world’s largest brands in the luxury market.)

The portrait of ‘LVMH - Christian Dior’ is both fragile and strong. Teruya gives the paper a second life, returning it to the form of the tree. The white paper bag, both encloses the delicate tree, and appears to be held up by it. 

The bustling life of a carried shopping bag is returned to silence. Spirituality is found in the dappled light effects that are reminiscent of a forest. Cut holes light up the dark interior and cast organic shapes on the walls. The artist (Notice-Forest, 2015) wants his viewers to slow down and ‘maintain a consideration that little things in the world matter.’ 

Teruya’s work has an environmental sensibility that is hard to miss. He reverses the flow of industry by transforming the paper bag back into a tree.

The singular tree charmingly suspended in the ‘LVMH - Christian Dior’ paper bag is a way to bring the spent consumer back to nature.

Teruya, Y. (2015) Notice-Forest, Available at: http://www.yukenteruyastudio.com/projects-1/notice-forest.html