The work presented, MITTAG (2025), is a new piece created with this exhibition site overlooking the Tokyo landscape in mind, exploring the theme of "eternity." Brandy is poured between two glass panels secured within a brass frame; the liquid's surface bisects the rhombus-shaped interior horizontally into two equal parts. Supporting this structure is a bronze cast from the deadwood of grapevines over sixty years old, with multiple trees intertwining to form a pedestal. The pressure of the liquid causes the glass panels to curve, creating a lens effect: the scenery viewed through the brandy is stained in varying shades of amber and distorted by the refraction of light.

 

"Mittag" means "noon" in German, and the horizon line of the brandy overlaps with the horizon of Tokyo beyond, symbolically depicting a landscape where the sun reaches its zenith and shines at its brightest. Multiple contrasts—liquid and gas, brass and bronze, the inorganic geometry of the frame and the organic forms of the vine—correspond to the binary oppositions central to the work: eternity and the ephemeral, the infinite and finite, the Apollonian (order) and Dionysian (chaos). Wada has noted that the production process of brandy, whereby fruit is harvested and undergoes fermentation and distillation, also evokes for him images of life, death, and rebirth. Through meticulous insight into materials and a serene tension born from the interplay of ambivalent concepts, this work quietly poses philosophical questions about time and life.

 

Text: Hirokazu Tokuyama｜ Senior Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo