Wada Reijiro (b. 1977) | VANITAS

SCAI The Bathhouse, Tokyo

For his series Vanitas (2015-), Wada arranges six metre brass sculptures in polyptych form. Prior to fitting, the artist places two or more of the brass coated wood panels at an acute angle. Various fruit, a recurring material in the artist’s work, are violently hurled at the panels and are left there until they decompose. What remains is a patina in the traces of the fruits movement where the acid has slowly eroded the surface of the brass. The term vanitas is closely linked to momento mori still life painting, arrangements of inanimate objects composed to remind the viewer of the transience and eventual decay of all living things, which were widely popular among Flemish and Dutch artists of the seventeenth century.

The Berlin-based artist Wada was born in 1977 in Hiroshima, Japan. Wada’s works are in public collections, including Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade