Creative Reuse and Kintsukuroi

with curator, jefferson godard

“The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Materialism is a term we are far too familiar with, and while it may come with some shame, we admittedly have a deep fondness for objects. After all, advertising, social media, and our own collective consciousness all encourage us to cherish objects.

So, what happens when something we covet falls and breaks apart? Kintsukuroi, a Japanese term for ‘golden repair’ comes to the rescue!

Kintsukuroi is a technique whereby one paints over the mended cracked surfaces with gold, thereby celebrating the fractures. By adding gold-dust or gold-leaf to the cracked outlines, we accentuate the object's vulnerability rather than hiding it. Going back centuries, this lamentable practice also alludes to the Japanese term wabi-sabi, or an aesthetic philosophy of seeing beauty in imperfections.

Our show with Karen Reimer, The Map vs. The Walk contains an entire gallery filled with works informed by the Kintsukuroi in a series entitled Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven (2014-15). This follows an earlier body of ceramic and China-based works, Contingent Solutions (1995-98) that the artist made while at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas.

Reimer began Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven by creating up a set of boundaries. In these mostly paper based works, she layers a remnant of fabric within the space of a three-dimensional geometric drawing on paper. Then, once the remnant of fabric falls outside of the boundary of this drawing, she would gold leaf over the fabric. This act serves to both highlight the perimeter while also alluding to the ‘golden repair’ of this graphic.

While this technique will not fix everything, it can help to save our coveted items. In fact, we can even save money and be bougie in the process!

But, if we want an immediate fix, fashion has a solution. For a mere $ 1,425 we can buy Martin Margiela’s Future Destroyed sneakers that resemble this Japanese technique! Just like Madonna once extolled, “You know that we are living in a material world.”

Images from Karen Reimer’s Geometry in Outer Space or Heaven, Contingent Series, as well as Martin Margiela’s sneakers: