NEW YORK, NY.- This fall Japan Society Gallery explores the emergence of a new genre in contemporary art, one uniquely rooted in Japanese culture: the use of centuries-old methods of basketry to create startlingly original sculptural forms. New Bamboo: Contemporary Japanese Masters is the first comprehensive overview of the phenomenon, which has emerged only in the last few decades. New Bamboo remains on view through January 11, 2009 at Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street between First and Second Avenues.

Ranging from ethereal, computer-plotted filigrees to angry, dirt-encrusted tangles and anthropomorphic forms, the more than 90 works on display are revelatory. “Rather paradoxically, by abandoning functionality, these 'post-basket' artists often seem to have achieved even more technically accomplished works than have previous generations of bamboo masters,” said Joe Earle, Director, Japan Society Gallery. The exhibition is the first that Earle has fully curated for the Gallery since assuming the post of Director in September 2007.

Several works have been installed beyond gallery walls in the organization’s landmark modernist entrance lobby: one, a large-scale, split-bamboo kakoi (enclosure) by noted bamboo master Kawana Tetsunori (b. 1945) commissioned for the exhibition by Japan Society; the other, a series of intricate bamboo constructions illuminating Western architectural and engineering principles by the New York-based sculptor Stephen Talasnik (b. 1954).

New Bamboo represents 23 innovators ranging in age from 32 to 78 years. The vast majority completed rigorous apprenticeships to master basketmakers before reaching beyond the craft’s boundaries. (Among the exceptions is Talasnik, the only artist in the exhibition who is not Japanese.)

Fashioned from ten-foot lengths of pale timber bamboo, a flower basket by Matsumoto Hafū (b. 1952) greets the visitor to New Bamboo. Although created only recently, the basket echoes a form developed in the 1950s by Matsumoto’s master’s master, Iizuka Rōkansai, the most influential of all 20th-century bamboo artists and one of the first to realize the sculptural potential of bamboo.

This foreshadowing leads the viewer to the first section of New Bamboo, which features works that embody the transformation from container to sculpture, including the seminal Breath (1968) by the senior Honma Kazuaki (b. 1930), with its darkened, upswept plumage, and seven gravity-defying pieces by his adopted son Honma Hideaki (b. 1959).

New Bamboo continues to explore the role of tradition in the second section by assembling the works of influential artists who have spent years producing baskets for a living, including a number who belong to long-established craft dynasties. Here, a taunt, delicately plaited melon-shaped orb, one of four extraordinary pieces by Yako Hōdō (b. 1940), testifies to how skills honed in basketry also can produce a wondrous, strange object, expressive of an inner world uninfluenced by international trends. Two intricately coiled sculptures fashioned from strands of finely split, unstained bamboo by Yamaguchi Ryūun, show how this former pupil of Living National Treasure Shōno Shōunsai (1904–1974) can evoke the ferocity of ocean waves in techniques developed for functional ends. Shōunsai’s own son, Shōno Tokuzō (b. 1942) contributes one of the most extreme forms, “Illusion” (2007), which leaves upright vertical strands unbound and free to unfold like an undulating sea of bamboo. This section also features sculptures by Tanabe Shōchiku III (b. 1973), a scion of the Tanabe dynasty of Sakai, Osaka, and his mother Tanabe Mitsuko (b. 1944), among others.

Two artists who are pushing at the limits of bamboo constructions are the focus in the next section. The first is Ikeda Iwao (b. 1940), from Musashino, near greater Tokyo, who once crafted exquisitely decorated lacquer boxes for the tea ceremony. Recently he has developed a process whereby he painstakingly applies many layers of polished lacquer to whole bamboo stems, then smashes the resulting structures to generate expressive, random forms. Four examples from this series are on view. Uematsu Chikuyū (b. 1947), a meticulous artist who produces about one large piece a year, is represented by seven wall-hung sculptures, ranging from an outsize piece made from a dark species of bamboo and finished with lacquer and clay powder to the lighter-hued tour-de-force “Circle of Perfection” (1997).

The last and largest section of New Bamboo brings together works by mostly younger practitioners who have spent the greater part of their careers making bamboo sculpture. Highlights abound: an erotically poised vessel form created by former architect Ueno Masao (b. 1949), who grows, harvests, seasons, treats, and splits his own bamboo; brash, assured, and sometimes purposefully awkward sculptures by Nagakura Ken’ichi (b. 1952); a warm-toned, lacquered “exploded basket” by Honda Shōryū (2006), minimalism at the service of precise expression; a virtuosic sculpture of thinly-cut bamboo plaited in an open hexagonal weave, which achieves the monumentality of a Henry Moore nude, by Morigami Jin (b. 1955); and a skeletal arrangement of dancing triangles by Nakatomi Hajime (b. 1974), ascending vertically like a Saul Steinberg line drawing endowed with three dimensions.