The second collection of ikebana works by contemporary flower artist Kazuya Sugita (born 1957 in Osaka). Kazuya Sugita has consistently arranged flowers in contemporary ceramics and photographed them to create his works. Contemporary ceramics stand on their own as artworks and sometimes refuse to be flower vases. Sugita has deliberately struggled with contemporary ceramics to arrange flowers. And he has created them not as records, but as flower arrangements that can be appreciated as photographic works in collaboration with photographers. This time, the photos are by three photographers: Takeshi Kita, Hyogo Mugita, and Saki Irimajiri. Sugita is not aiming for traditional flower arrangements. He is trying to realize that flower arrangements can be contemporary art. To that end, he chose contemporary ceramics as flower vases and collaborated with photographers with a contemporary sensibility. This collection of works is more contemporary and more pop than his first collection, Kogyo. However, what is interesting is that Kita and Mugita all took their photographs on film (4x5 color positive) with analog large-format cameras. On the other hand, Sugita is trying to take advantage of the advantages of color film photography that digital cameras cannot offer.
