Fabrice Hyber plants Seeds and Thoughts at WATARI-UM in Tokyo

Ideas that got their start in the wildness of Rural France have landed in Tokyo thanks to the Seed and Grow exhibit by Fabrice Hyber.

Calling it an exhibit is a bit reductive has it combines watercolors describing nature in action as well as real plants and weeds so visitors can smell nature as well as touch it.

The Tokyo Art Beat review Urban Gardening Guerilla Sows Flash Greenery tells us:

"To inspire us, Hyber has placed transparent plastic boxes of bees, earthworms and flies on the fourth floor, urging us to observe their movements and maybe to replicate them in negotiations with our own environment. The transparent beehive stands out for being connected to a gallery window via a tube, through which the bees come and go as they please — this exhibit is not an isolated objet but a nexus of ongoing, organic activity. Here, we are reminded of how bees function with a communal hive mentality, how earthworms decompose garbage and recycle nutrients, how flies transport all sorts of things (including pathogens). These insects perform by instinct what we labor to accomplish in our resource-rich, circulation-poor society."

Fabrice Hyber wants to seed ideas like he planted the forest in Vendee (France) where it all started.

Here is how he describes his approach:

"Art came from  seed of thought, the forest is created from seed of the earth, too.
Both make my head more and more flexible, and make me take new action."

As for the Seed and Grow project itself:

"Seed is the metaphor of thought and behavior to create art works.
And it also means origins of actual vegetables and trees that are getting bigger, grown by the power of the earth."

In a reminder that things miles and years apart are connected, Fabrice Hyber Vegetable Character (image below) is quite close to paintings by Arcimboldo (the 16th Century artist).

Picture above via Tokyo Art Beat piece (courtesy of the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art)

Seed and Grow runs until Sunday, August 31st.

The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art is closed on Mondays.
Doors are opened from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm and Wednesdays until 9:00 pm).

I wrote about Arcimboldo in Faces full of Fruits and Vegetables...Arcimboldo...Musee du Luxembourg...Paris

In the garden for Tokyo Thursdays #49

Recent Museum Bit: Dinner and A Night at the Museum: Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid