Ray Kurusu: Smooth 'Micke' Erotic with Bamboo and Boxwood Tobacco Pipe

For those of you who are familiar with the work of Hiroyuki Tokutomi, this form should be instantly recognizable. Simply put, here Ray Kurusu has presented us with an adaptation of Toku's own unique variant of one of Jorn Micke's most iconic and, perhaps, controversial shapes. Its anatomical allusions, of course, are quite obvious, and to ignore them would just be remiss — Micke's original form being a highly charged, abstract depiction of coitus, after all — but its evolution over time is key here.

While Micke's original design was more abstract and suggestive, Tokutomi has over the years reinterpreted and redesigned the form to become increasingly organic, shifting the allusion from a reference to a sexual act to an abstraction of an idea, of a thing in and of itself. Its this evolution that Ray has so beautifully captured and capitalized on here, simplifying the form by limiting the asymmetry, streamlining the design, and compressing it all together until its organicism shifts abstraction into the overt and obvious. The rotundity of the bowl, the plump cheeks to either flank, the stout transition, and the carefully oriented knuckle of bamboo, even the rounded stem base... all of these elements come together to create a striking depiction of the shape in and of itself — while still maintaining its utility as a functional work of art.

- Andrew Wike