COMINGOuT

The customs and the culture of Japan – a design for a temporary exhibition for the Institute of Design in Warsaw

Studio of Exhibition Design

>Izabela Pluta

For me, creative activity, design, is a multi-stage process, sometimes a long one, but always rewarding with work well done and a pleasing final result.
The starting point is an image or a set of images of abstract forms or shapes.
I always take time to consider them, pondering what their final shape will be
in my project.
Keen observation is the key to creating something valuable. Nature, human behaviour, ways of dealing with everyday life, sequences of events or unusual situations – these let me realise relationships, which in turn become an inspiration in the process of creation. On one hand: focus and the detailed study of a given task, exploration of all its aspects, on the other: spontaneity and indulgence in certain moods. Order, but still interwoven with a slight chaos; it all plays a major role in the process of creation and is decisive in the final effect of my work. Sometimes I put off a project for a while, to come back to it with a fresh approach.
Regardless of the form of the design, whether it is a poster, a painting or an entire exhibition, there is one presumption: to evoke an attitude in the audience. For me this is a guarantee that my piece will be remembered.
Each time I try to introduce the audience to the world of my sense of aesthetics, my interpretation of the world around us. It is fascinating to have the opportunity to look at reality through someone else’s eyes, isn’t it?

> Professor Henryka Noskiewicz-Gałązka

It has been a hundred years since the first Polish encounter with Japanese art, which occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century thanks to Feliks Jasieński, the author of a collection of essays entitled Manggha. Promenades á travers les mondes, l’art et les idées. It was his enthusiasm that led to broader interest in Japan, and collecting objects of Japanese arts and crafts became particularly fashionable among the artists of the Young Poland community. A small group of Poles shares this same fascination for Japan today, and thanks to the Manggha Centre of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków our “journey to Japan” will be made significantly easier.
Izabela Pluta, fascinated with Japonism, proposed a temporary exhibition, to be organised at the Institute of Design in Warsaw, the substantial content of which
is related to the customs and the culture of Japan.
From among numerous possibilities she selected eight exceedingly interesting customs, both old ones and those still celebrated today. These are: Chanoyu – the theme of the exhibition – the Way of Tea, which in Japan has been the subject of worship, as well as Ikebana, Bonsai, Japanese gardens, Hanami celebration, traditional Japanese games, Geisha and Hinamatsuri – the Girls’ Day celebrated in Japan on March 3.
The designer, aware of the fact that the beauty of a Japanese interior originates in the play of filtered light with shadow and the feeling of spaciousness, built an exhibition system subordinated to these basic principles of Japanese aesthetics.Thanks
to appropriate selection of exhibits, the arrangement of a full-scale dry rock garden, the Way of Tea room, and a model of a Torii gate, and due to the visual measures applied, she introduces the audience to the exquisite nature of Japanese aestheticism and sense of beauty.
Following the Japanese taste for order, modesty and simplicity, Izabela Pluta created an exhibition design fully commemorating the achievement of Feliks Jasieński.