Makoto Nakamura

Statement

For the four decades, I have been creating a variety of tessellation works to uncover the potential of tessellation design established as an artistic technique by M. C. Escher. My recent focuses are on spherical puzzles. Some spherical works were designed by Escher and made of wood or ivory by Japanese craftsmen, however, they are very solid. My challenge is to make spherical tessellation elastic as puzzles for players to repeatedly assemble and disassemble by themselves. Such puzzles could contribute intuitive understanding of profound nature of polyhedra for non-specialists in geometry.

Artworks

Forest green tree frog lays eggs in sponge-like foam collectively produced by multiple frogs on a tree branch. In this work, twelve frogs are collaboratively coordinated in the spherical symmetry group "332". Frogs can be tightly fitting together during spawning and they can be flexibly broken apart when disassembling.