modern shohin display

Refreshing? As I said on the first page, Colin Lewis was doing this at least 20 years ago. The trees are excellent and would look good anywhere. This way of displaying is not modern.

will baddeley wrote:Refreshing? As I said on the first page, Colin Lewis was doing this at least 20 years ago. The trees are excellent and would look good anywhere. This way of displaying is not modern.

In the context of bonsai, 20 years ago would stil be considered modern, wouldn't it?

Rob Kempinski wrote:

will baddeley wrote:Refreshing? As I said on the first page, Colin Lewis was doing this at least 20 years ago. The trees are excellent and would look good anywhere. This way of displaying is not modern.

In the context of bonsai, 20 years ago would stil be considered modern, wouldn't it?

In the history of bonsai, traditional Japanese bonsai display could be called modern....If you want to split hairs. I have seen many club displays since Colin Lewis, done in a similar way. I will put it another way. This is nothing new or fresh.

...a thousand year old tradition...just 20 years ago the new idea pops up, yes i guess its still very modern and recent will. and I guess its still in the experimental stage at this point and even for another 20 years its still gonna be refreshing in a sense, because style like this happens in about 1:100 ratio or more against the traditional displays.

regards,
jun

jun wrote:...a thousand year old tradition...just 20 years ago the new idea pops up, yes i guess its still very modern and recent will. and I guess its still in the experimental stage at this point and even for another 20 years its still gonna be refreshing in a sense, because style like this happens in about 1:100 ratio or more against the traditional displays.

regards,
jun

Hello Jun.
Bonsai has been "popular" in Europe and the US, at its earliest, the 50's . Modern ways to display bonsai have come from that point. White painted boxes have been displayed on many occasion, at club and exhibition level for a long time now and are nothing new.

Thanks Will,

....probably im just limiting my point of view on our region. to most of us this is still new and quite refreshing. most asian designs are patterned to chinese design which is very ancient. very limited influence from western design reached our shores and got adopted. here most people will call these new presentation outrageous if not crazy.

regards,
jun

Walter, nice display and nice trees. Modern or not I like it; I think it works very well.

Here the definitionof 'modern' according to Dictionary.com

–adjective
1.
of or pertaining to present and recent time; not ancient or remote: modern city life.
2.
characteristic of present and recent time; contemporary; not antiquated or obsolete: modern viewpoints.
3.
of or pertaining to the historical period following the Middle Ages: modern European history.
4.
of, pertaining to, or characteristic of contemporary styles of art, literature, music, etc., that reject traditionally accepted or sanctioned forms and emphasize individual experimentation and sensibility.
5.
( initial capital letter ) new ( def. 12 ) .

Will,

you seem to be fixed on the meaning number 5. Nobody said so.
And if this is so commonplace, why would almost every organizer of an exhibt in Europe DEMAND a table and often an accent object too with your tree if you want ot show a tree? Why would I have to get extra permission to show my way. This is not commonplace at all.

Bravo Walter!!! Surperb shows/displays...both! One of the really cool things about using cubes, is that the arrangement of the cubes is nearly limitless.

Top drawer my friend.

I would like to offer this thought...IMAHO...in the BMW display, I would use about 1/3 fewer plants...giving each bonsai a little more space.

However...new, old, ageless, or whatever, I can well imagine many observers saying "...WOW! I've seen art displayed like this in an art gallery...but never bonsai...".

Great work Walter...

Pat

Don't patronise me Walter. I fully understand what modern is. There are 2 examples of exhibitions on this thread that use white boxes and I repeat, Colin Lewis used white boxes, as well as many club displays. More commonplace than you perceive.

Hi! All!

How do i put this richt,.....?
I like the way of display!
And it comes out best on the display at BMW,......where suroundings are the understatement of them white stands!
However doing it shohin style the blocks should understate the display .
For me the countours of the tree on first line should fit onto the block on the seccond row.
Otherwise the square lines of the seccond row block becomes the immage of the first in line tree.....

Could have been said before did not read everything,.....sorry

My humble opinion,.....

grtzz m.

I don't often interject opinion on the art theory and philosophical side of things but what the heck....

The trees look great, the display highlights the tree because it is stark and simplistic. There is not any "meaning" nor "seasonality" to infer from arrangement or accompaniments......unless the trees state such seasonality with leaf color etc..

With all due respect & having said that I like the trees & the displays very much I must add an opinion as I have been following the other similar "themed" threads.

I think bothering with all the darn labels and definitions serves little purpose except to perpetuate some debate. The counter arguments only seem to fuel useless fires.

The traditionalists liked the displays & trees...........Why does it matter, and why does it matter if "they" were "traditionalist"...did they have to wear a blue or red name tag identifying their affiliation? Did anyone say they didn't like it? Its nice so probably everyone like it.

Modern is defined as per Dictionary.com...........I am sure there are way more than 5 definitions of modern on the entire WWW, but again why does all this matter. They're just well arranged white blocks with very nice bonsai. You could have put them on a stack of spare tires and the trees would still be nice. There's no cutting edge statement being made that I can see.

Again, I don't see where the labels matter. I like the trees though, Walter.

NeilDellinger wrote: ......... With all due respect & having said that I like the trees & the displays very much I must add an opinion as I have been following the other similar "themed" threads.

I think bothering with all the darn labels and definitions serves little purpose except to perpetuate some debate. The counter arguments only seem to fuel useless fires.

The traditionalists liked the displays & trees...........Why does it matter, and why does it matter if "they" were "traditionalist"...did they have to wear a blue or red name tag identifying their affiliation? Did anyone say they didn't like it? Its nice so probably everyone like it.

Modern is defined as per Dictionary.com...........I am sure there are way more than 5 definitions of modern on the entire WWW, but again why does all this matter. They're just well arranged white blocks with very nice bonsai. You could have put them on a stack of spare tires and the trees would still be nice. There's no cutting edge statement being made that I can see.

Again, I don't see where the labels matter. ......................

Precisely!

Regards
Morten Albek

Walter Pall wrote:The shohin exhibit in Kulmein, Bavaria was quite successful. Here my part of the exhbit. It was very well recieved. Not a single one of the traditionalists did not like it.

New, old, modern, beaten dead horse, whatever you want to call it - I really like this type of display (except for those ugly name tags cluttering up the table) and the next one from Hawaii (that was even better).

It seems like traditional (God help me, I used the "T" word) Japanese style displays are usually done so poorly that they just look bad. Maybe that's just me and the fact that I know better. It seems like there are never enough good stands, and never the right one for a specific tree. And then there are the accent plants and placement... I think the white boxes are the way to go.

Russell

I do not proclaim myself an expert on display and all of the finer points of pot, stand, scroll and accent selection. BUT....I think Russell is spot on.

I have a very good friend that makes some high quality stands based upon designs he has found from older Kokufu albums. Nice stands are damn expensive & also hard to find. Try pricing a nice root stand even for a shohin tree. Holy cow!

To the point Russell made.... I just don't think many people that display trees have the financial means necessary to develop a collection of slabs, stands that allows them a broad selection to be drawn from when composing their display. Likewise, do most events even allow enough space to pull off a display that incorporates all of these elements (stand, accent, scroll etc..).

Does the right stand make a difference...I think so. Others may not care....but its a matter of taste, right?

oh yeah....regarding the name tags. I agree they are distracting. I worked in museum accessions as a curator for awhile. We utilized similar boxes but we always printed a CLEAR label describing the artifact and placed it on the upper right corner of the box. This way it could be removed and it was not a distraction from the exhibited item.

Maybe this could be done in your next exhibit, Walter? I think it would look better.

Neil

Neil and Russel,

I just hate these name tags. I told the organizers 'we don't exhibt name tags, we exhibit trees!'. But one has to accept that such shows are run by amateurs who work hard and one cannot simply take the name tags away. I agree: there should be a small white tag glued to the side of the cubes.

I know exactly what you mean about those name tags!!! They are soooooooooooo distracting.

I think the BMW display is stunning, and I wouldn't change a thing. I can't imagine a traditional, tokonoma type display in a facility like this. The trees' stats are placed tastefully and I love that you can walk around this type of display see the trees from almost every angle. When was the last time you did that at a bonsai show?

R

At another exhibit in Germany, in Weil der Stadt the shohins were shown in this modern fashion too. I really like these pillars, this looks so cool.
Image courtesy of Juergen Knopf, Weil der Stadt.

I think it gives a certain clean, crisp, look. Love the trees Walter!!!

Here is a shohin bonsai display (modern???) which I arranged in 2007 at the World Bonsai Friendship Federation Convention in San Juan Puerto Rico. This type of box display has been used for years in the United States for displaying both normal size bonsai as well as shohin bonsai. Bonsai in art gallery displays often use this method of display. In 1979 (31 years ago) when ABS had their annual symposium at Cornell University I arranged a similar display in the Johnson Museum of Art on the campus. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of that display as they got toasted in our house fire.

Please note the spacing between each box area in this 2007 display, grouping some together for more impact and isolating some specimens individually to highlight their beauty. This display also uses different size shohin bonsai to provide interest and more important variety in height to the entire display. All the bonsai should be at different heights and in different forms and colors as well. We displayed all the shohin bonsai in one area, kind of like a room dedicated to small size bonsai for more impact and also security as well.

It is a good thing I read forums on the internet because I did know know what I was doing 31 years ago was "modern".

Bill

Been reading this since it started, amusing.

If you see the frame and not the painting, it's a failure.

So if you see the pot and not the tree - wellllllllllllll......

If you see the stands..............................

The problem with white is simply the glare, and if you are are having trouble seeing the trees, if the white is too loud / reflective.

Storms in teacups, and look 5 pages and 5,588 views.

Loved the trees, Walter designs well.
Want to be controversial - here it is - Bonsai/Penjing is Garden Craft - Not Art.
Ha, Khaimraj

William N. Valavanis wrote:It is a good thing I read forums on the internet because I did know know what I was doing 31 years ago was "modern".

I think that your display compared to traditional (traditional table, background scroll, general composition ...) is modern. Correct me if I am wrong.