Origami by Kumi Yamashita, 2011.

If you were like us, it took you hours to complete a passable orgami crane. Even when you did finish something that vaguely resembled a waterborne mammal, the paper was matted and limp – not your finest moment. Which is why the art of Japanese-born American-based artist Kumi Yamashita is so overwhelming. The artist folds and sculpts stray pieces of origami paper to cast shadows that look amazingly human.

Each portrait looks like a crumpled piece of scrap paper at first, but shine a light on the sheet, and you’ll see the profile of her subject, right down to the stray hairs. Click through.

I sculpt shadow with light or sometimes light with shadow,” the artist explains on her website. “But both function in essentially the same manner.” Yamashita works in a surprisingly diverse range of mediums, but in each case, the results focus on the play between positive and negative space. In one series, she strips away threads from patches of denim to render portraits. In another, thousands of tiny galvanized pin heads form hyperreal faces.

As an artist-in-residence in Roswell, New Mexico in 2007, Yamashita began experimenting with squares of resin, rather than paper. She invited 40 locals to participate in her experiment, sculpting their profiles in amazing detail. She describes the Fragments portraits as “… A celebration of the people whose names may never make it into the history books or history museums, but who definitely make up the rich fabric of life in a pueblo, city, county, and state.”

In 2011, Yamashita was back to working with origami paper. Her most recent shadow work was done last year for American Express, who commissioned the artist to create a piece for the foyer of their Tribeca offices. Again, Yamashita invited her audience to participate. She took photographs of every AmEx employee in the office, ultimately choosing 22 to depict in shadow due to the size constraints of the available wall space. It was up to the employees to decide whom she had picked – but we can’t imagine it was all that difficult.

Fragments by Kumi Yamashita, 2009.

Fragments by Kumi Yamashita, 2009.

All images courtesy of Kumi Yamashita.

by Architizer Editors

posted in Uncategorized

tagged American Express, Art, design, Fragments, Kumi Yamashita, origami, portaits, Portraits, sculpture

more articles by Architizer Editors