TAKU OBATA X COREJEWELS DIAMOND FIGURE

GR8 will release a collaborative sculptural work by sculptor Taku Obata and Japanese high-end jeweler COREJEWELS.

Rooted in self-standing wooden sculpture and known for his “B-BOY” series that explores mass, space, and movement, Taku Obata has developed a distinct sculptural practice. COREJEWELS, recognized for its innovative designs, from black diamond collections to grillz, as well as its exceptional craftsmanship and quality, brings this collaboration to form. The result is a “wearable sculpture” in the form of a necklace, scaled down to approximately 1/20 of Obata’s camphor wood sculpture measuring over 6 feet 3 inches, “B-BOY Down Jacket NANAME 2016.” In contrast to wood, which gradually decays, this work employs gold and diamonds — materials of permanence. It represents a special collaboration that brings to life an expansion of the expressive boundaries of Obata’s sculptural practice, realized by COREJEWELS.

This work embodies two opposing states in sculpture: the suspended state as movement, and the placed state as stillness. It is produced as an edition of two, reflecting the dual states a single sculpture can exist in. The piece is crafted in 10-karat white gold for both the body and the chain. The surface is set with over 2,300 diamonds, whose brilliance is enough to blur the contours of the form. Though solid and weighty, it creates a visual paradox as light dissolves the boundary between form and space. Moving between these contrasts—movement and stillness, shifts in material and scale from the original work, and the tension between physical presence and perception—the work operates as a conceptual sculpture.