Kuu: Panels of Charred Wood and Silver Nitrate
This work examines opposing states: weight and lightness, permanence and dissolution. Charred wood retains the material trace of fire. Silver nitrate, by contrast, is optical and transient; it transforms the same surface into shifting light, moving between solidity and disappearance. Shou sugi ban (焼杉板) has been practiced for centuries in western Japan, particularly along the Seto Inland Sea, to protect temples and dwellings from fire, weather, and insects. Through controlled carbonization, fire paradoxically grants longevity. What appears destroyed becomes enduring. I first encountered this technique at the Buddhist temple where I grew up, its exterior darkened by charred wood. Here, the method is removed from its architectural context and its customary cedar. Instead, I burn redwood from Santa Cruz, the landscape of my childhood in California. After burning, I apply silver nitrate, historically central to mirror-making and early photography. In Japanese aesthetics, blackened wood has long signified shadow and the enduring weight of matter; silver destabilizes that weight, reflecting and dissolving the surface.
The title Kuu comes from the Japanese character 空, which holds two meanings: kū, emptiness or void, and sora, the sky. One word contains both the boundlessness of the sky and the absence of inherent essence. That duality mirrors the oscillation within these works, between matter and immateriality, surface and reflection, presence and impermanence.
