Some of Floderer’s most exquisite sculptures are the multilayered sea creatures, such as corals, sponges, sea urchins and jellyfish. For these, Floderer uses single sheets of paper, crumpling them to build up a naturalistic volume and texture. His corals are striking examples of his skill in blending origami technique and pure artistry. He first crumples the model using a complex tessellation pattern that produces multiple points. He then colors it with watercolor or pigmented inks using a technique resembling tie-dyeing to produce works that possess the delicacy and translucence of the genuine organism. For his trees, branched corals and sea urchins, he uses a thin Japanese paper called Tengujo (5 gr/m2), but for many of his other natural forms he uses papers made of mulberry fibers or Korean, Indian and Thai papers that resemble Japanese handmade washi. Although his sculptures appear to have the delicacy of the actual creatures he is mimicking, they have proven resilient; only a few have been damaged after repeated manipulations or long-term exhibition.
Although realism is an important aspect of Floderer’s work, mystery and fantasy also play a role in many of his larger sculptures and his installation work. Using similar folding patterns to those of the spiky coral, he turns the layers of paper inside out to produce spectacular abstract creations that evoke the stalactites of a limestone cave or rugged fantasy landscapes. One abstract work entitled Boom! (2000) is folded out of Wenzhou calligraphy paper, a thin but strong, rough and absorbent Chinese paper made from mulberry bark, and colored with watercolor and Indian ink to evoke an organic explosion, perhaps even the Big Bang that created our universe.
Recently, in his installation work, Floderer has created life-size landscapes that are inhabited by mysterious looking creatures. In Unidentified Flying Origami (UFO) (2004), he has folded an eerie world inhabited by large, inflated crumpled paper models of micro-organisms that float and rotate via air flow. Although there are several forms in origami, such as the traditional frog that are inflated, Floderer is probably the first origami artist to explore the potential of inflatable origami in his art. As viewers walk through this mysterious space surrounded by unfamiliar floating creatures, they too are temporarily part of this microscopic world, a perspective that invites them to consider their own place and relevance in a much larger universe.
Coral
Vincent Floderer, France 2005, Bolloré paper 12 gr/m2 (Photo by the artist)
Three Trees
Vincent Floderer, France 2001, Alios paper 25 gr/m2 (Photo by Romain Chevrier)
Blue Coral
Vincent Floderer, France 2005, Japanese Tengujo paper 6 gr/m2 (Photo by Romain Chevrier)
Branch 89b
Vincent Floderer, France 2007, Bolloré paper (Photo by the artist)
In such installation works, in which his crumpled forms are suspended enticingly close to the viewer, the temptation to touch is strong. Floderer is aware that perhaps more so than in any other type of origami, his crumpled works invite movement and touch. So for many years he has been a rare creature in the origami world—an origami performance artist, giving performances that combine teaching, theater and comedy. In these, he teaches his students/participants (occasionally other origami artists) to crumple paper into various forms, a process that also involves dampening and stretching out the paper. These performances have also allowed him to inflate his own models, stretch them out and then recrumple them to their original form, not only to show audiences their ability to move and transform but also to demonstrate the concept that just like living creatures paper also has memory.
Vincent Floderer is considered by many other origami artists to be one of the great innovators in the realm of paper folding. With his background in fine art and his deep understanding of the relationship between materials and form, he has played a large role in elevating origami to a truly sculptural art form, in which a recognizable form is produced by the building up of folds rather than the cutting away with a chisel. With his unique aesthetic sensibility, boundless creativity and sense of whimsy, he has inspired many other artists both in the origami community and beyond to pick up some sheets of paper and explore creative crumpling.
Volcano
Vincent Floderer, France 2005, Bolloré paper 12 gr/m2 (Photo by the artist)
Unidentified Flying Origami (UFO) Installation
Vincent Floderer, France 2004, folded with the Le Crimp team, brown wrapping papers 25–45 gr/m2, cassel extract, shellac (Photo by Jean-Pierre Bonnebouche)
Clitocibe (in glass)
Vincent Floderer, France 2007, tissue paper 17 gr/m2, colored ink, beeswax (Photo by the artist)
graceful geometry
IN THE ORIGAMI SCULPTURE OF TOMOKO FUSE
Photo by Herbert Bungartz, Freising
Tomoko Fuse (b.1951) occupies a unique position in Japan’s origami community. Since the mid-twentieth century when origami started to become a worldwide phenomenon, the origami community in Japan (and elsewhere) has been dominated by male designers, folders and writers. Despite this gender imbalance, for over thirty years Fuse has quietly and modestly gained considerable respect in Japan and throughout the world as a designer of a multitude of modular creations, including boxes and containers, kusudama, paper toys, masks, and polyhedra and other geometric objects. She is also one of the most prolific origami authors in the world, having published some 100 instructional origami books, many of which have been translated into English, Chinese, French, German, Italian and Korean. As an origami artist, Fuse’s designs have also evolved over the past couple of decades, from ornate boxes, toys and modular forms into sophisticated works of two- and three-dimensional sculptures that have been displayed in museum exhibitions and at art galleries around the world. Apparent in her recent sculptures, tessellations and installation work is not only her mastery of an array of complex folding techniques but also a uniquely gentle approach to geometry.
Fuse was born in Niigata in northern Japan and now lives with her husband Taro Toriumi, a respected woodblock print maker and etcher, in a hillside village in rural Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Fuse first learned origami while in hospital as a child, and her first model was a nurse’s hat. When she was nineteen years old, she studied for two and a half years with Toyoaki Kawai, a modern origami master who published many origami design books from the 1960s through the 1980s. Several years later, in 1981, Fuse published the first of her own origami instruction books, many of which focus on modular origami, a type of origami in which multiple modules are folded separately and assembled to create more complex, often geometric, forms. In the 1990s, Fuse became particularly well known for her origami kusudama—decorative balls that are made by connecting separate, usually flower-shaped, units. She has also designed and published many books on origami boxes as well as origami wreaths, rings and quilts, all of which are made by assembling origami modules into elaborate geometric patterns.
Spiral Towers