Martina della Valle | workshop One flower, one leaf #4

On saturday 20 and sunday 21 january 2018 the museum Nordiska Akvarellmuseet in Sweden will host the workshop One flower, one leaf #4, guided by Martina della Valle and the ikebana master Satoko Hatayama.

After an introduction on the origins of Ikebana (Japanese traditional form of arranging flowers), the research unfolds in the surrounding landscape, with a field trip to collect fragments of spontaneous vegetation (plants, branches, flowers, etc.). Under the direction of the Ikebana teacher, the participants will produce their own composition, which then will be photographed by Martina della Valle. In this way, the compositions created by the workshop participants becomes part of the artists photographic archive and art project.

The work is part of the series Wabi-Sabi by Martina della Valle, that moves with the discovery of some undated negatives, portraying among others, Ikebana compositions, maybe once belonged to a flower-arrangement master or a photo-studio. The found materials – negatives of several formats, glass plates and hand-written pergamine paper sleeves – with their unaltered dust and scratches are contact-printed in scale 1:1 or enlarged to assume their original sculptural presence, to recompose an archive of elements of study.

The series, showed in Metronom in 2017 during the collective exhibition Through the Looking Glass, is constitued by five diptychs of contact prints, showing what is defined by Leonard Koren ” beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. Wabi-Sabi could even be called the Zen of things.”

For a focus: interview to Martina della Valle on generazionecritica.it

One flower, one leaf #4
Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, Skärhamn, Sweden
workshop with Martina della Valle and Satoko Hatayama
20 – 21 january 2018
from 11am to 4pm