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Dialogue with a Tree 2006

Best known for her works involving meticulously cutting and layering hundreds of pieces of white paper, Noriko Ambe creates sculptural landscapes that evoke a subtle feeling of loss and detachment. For Force of Nature, Ambe explores this concept through an installation that involves both paper works and drawing on the annual rings of a tree in the forest. A photograph of the drawing is projected in the gallery where the artist has continued and extended her drawing onto the gallery wall itself. Through this layering of imagery, the artist creates an interaction between past and present. These tree rings represent the pace of nature as being on a much longer time-scale than that of a single human life. The paper works are an integral part of the installation, echoing the cracks and crevices of the tree.  Ambe has also gone so far as to violate the gallery’s walls themselves in an effort to demonstrate the interconnectedness of all things, including the ubiquitous “white cube” in which her works are often seen.

 For Ambe, the accumulation of her drawings or cuttings represents a marking of her time. Time is a central element in her oeuvre, now spanning six years of a self-defined ten-year commitment to explore these “linear actions.” The artist sees nature as her teacher. In her words, “humans are the microcosmos.”  All life is contained within us and extends well beyond us.  The actions she performs are all linear, and human, yet everything is informed by that which surrounds us.  By tracing the preset patterns of the annual rings of a tree, she is collaborating with nature on its own terms.  Extending these drawings to incorporate the gallery wall and to engulf a space offers a humble, human dimension to the “dialogue.”

Noriko Ambe sees her work as an extension of her world-view.  In the cut-paper works, she describes the un-cut sheet as a metaphor for the universe.  Once she begins cutting layer after layer, she is defining her presence and her time on the planet. In that sense, she is cutting herself out of the universe to more accurately describe her distinctiveness within it.  She often refers to the cut-out (or positive) elements of her work as being representations of her own “spirit.” The resulting absence is a visible reminder of the place of humans within the universe.

Art historians may be tempted to classify Ambe’s work as having “neo-minimalist” tendencies, but, in fact, she is attempting to provide a compelling case for process being as important as product. By using “Yupo,” synthetic white paper and natural elements, she is aligning her own artistic practice with the habitual traces of nature.  She is less interested in the finished piece than she is in the process of attending to the nuances of nature as it informs her hand and mind

Noriko drawing the stump ( Mitchell Kearney)

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