Tanabe Chikuunsai IV

Tanabe Chikuunsai IV (born 1973) is a Japanese bamboo artist. His sculptural works and functional objects are hand made from tiger bamboo (torachiku). Tai Modern, Santa Fe, Japan House Los Angeles, and other venues.

In 2022, Chikuunsai IV was invited to create a site-specific installation, Yügo (Fusion), in Casa Lowe, in Barcelona, Spain. The installation was created from 6,000 individual pieces of tiger bamboo and meandered through several rooms of the interior space. The installation used no fasteners nor glue; instead it relied on the principle of tensegrity, tension-and-compression, to support the large installation.

Collections His work can be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Seattle Museum of Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, among others.

Personal life Chikuunsai IV comes from a line of several generations of bamboo masters, starting with his great grandfather Chikuunsai (1877–1937). His grandfather was Chikuunsai II (1910–2000), and his father Chikuunsai III.