High Humour Design is the motto and at the same time the artistic ideal of Shigeki Yamamoto, a Japanese designer and artist specialising in woodworking, who brings his light-hearted humour to everyday life by creating wooden furniture that looks like real sculptures.
The Art of Shigeki Yamamoto
Original and, in a way, playful wooden furniture, entirely handmade to suit every furnishing need. The handcrafted creations of Shigeki Yamamoto (class of 1979, Interior Design student in Osaka) show unexpected faces, combining a refined woodworking to the technique of ironworking learned and inspired at the school of the famous sculptor Nobuyuki Tachibana.
In 2006, Shigeki Yamamoto moved to Germany, where he still lives and works. His personal brand, born in 2010, aims to bring fun and surprise into everyday life, without however renouncing thehighest quality of materials and workmanshipwhich the artist perceives as a response to mass productionin order to restore a spiritual richness to the finished product.
This is how furniture becomes a true work of art, challenging the technical limits of the materials used in the name of innovation: like the Cactus in beech wooda transformable partition element designed to meet the flexibility of modern living spaces; or the Light Treethe tree with four lamps that can be positioned as desired.
The artist's output is decidedly multifaceted, as is the thinking behind the creations themselves:
"My work is inspired by the memory.
Memories are something precious, may surface at any timealthough time never runs backwards. Each of us has beautiful memories and painful memories: my aim is to stimulate the memory of those who observe my works, bringing back episodes and emotions that are near or far, but in any case unique. A real journey down memory lane“.
The theme of memory makes its way into Shigeki Yamamoto's works without any intermediary: the simple, streamlined elegance of the furniture he creates is reminiscent of a child's Lego creations, bringing with it all the fun and carefree feeling that characterises them: pure creative instinct.
Freedom is indeed a fundamental element in the Japanese artist's approach to design. Starting with a barely sketched-out idea, Shigeki Yamamoto begins to assemble the components, leaving room for the unexpected and the creative flash, the result of the inspiration of the moment.
The result is unique pieces of furniture that seem to have grown naturally from their individual parts to form a whole, a harmoniously structured whole that also invites the viewer to indulge his or her creative instincts.
Form becomes fun, making everyday interaction with furniture both comfortable and exhilarating.
In 2017, with his work Play SideboardYamamoto won the prestigious award Creativepool 2017 for the Product/Industrial category.
