CURATOR: Radek Wohlmuth

ARTIST: Sakuma Sota

One arrives in the wandering forest when one accidentally crosses the wandering root. One then usually moves among the trees in irregular, erratic circles with no beginning and no end. It’s not so much that one can’t get back to the marked path of the everyday, but rather that one does not want to stop aimlessly wandering through the mysterious forest where anything can happen. Japanese painter, carver, and dancer Sakuma Sota paints such places and carves creatures that can inhabit them out of linden wood.

Sometimes he also depicts them in ink and acrylic on traditional Japanese washi paper. If the plants are mostly real, the inhabitants of his magical forest—whether characters or animals—are by contrast a bit phantasmal. Reality and fantasy thus mix in his paintings, which merely proves that the line between the two is not only very thin but also permeable.