KARESANSUI
A scaled reconstruction transforms the canonical dry garden from a fixed image into material, use and temporal change.
CONCEPT
The dry garden of Ryōan-ji is reconstructed at a scale of 1:5. Its rocks are replaced by cones of gravel, translating an iconic composition into a reduced and unstable material system.
Visitors can enter the installation and act upon it. Gravel is raked, displaced and accumulated; the image of the garden is repeatedly produced and dissolved.
Reduction does not preserve an original. It opens a process in which contemplation and participation, authenticity and reconstruction, landscape and action continually exchange places.
Installation · participatory action
1:5 reconstruction of the Ryōan-ji dry garden
Gravel · timber platforms · tools
2006
Kunstraum Dornbirn · Contemporary Art Center, Aarhus