THE MASTER TRUSTS HIS INNER VISION:
CHERRY CLOUDS IN BERGAMO
Out of what then were Heaven and Earth engendered?
They were engendered out of nothing, and came into existence of themselves.(Lieh-tzu, the Book of Perfect Emptiness)
Many people think of emptiness as a nullification of being.
Some people envisage it as a haunting void, an iconicity of absence.
To us, an empty space is a space that essentially IS and the true road to follow is to do nothing more but recognize it and to accept it in its luminous quiddity, its nothingness.
There is no better way to reaffirm the sheer intensity of the persistence of the hollow into our lives than – from a designer’s point of view – to engage it in a play: to twist it and turn it into a delicate divertissement. To morph the visual silence with the gentle, smooth curves of a Nidra trunk waving in the air and saluting its lightness.
We like to conceive this decoration at the JAPANESE RESTAURANT HAKI, with light clouds of pink coming from a giant Cherry - さくら - Tree (almost 10 meters of length) projecting toward the center of the dining hall, as a hymn to the wisdom of emptiness that the attuned and attentive mind can perceive in everything.
Light, soft and gentle clouds benignly hovering over the restaurant tables convey to the diners a peaceful feeling of tranquility while tasting a delicate meal. As the wise man says:
“We mold clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes the vessel useful.”
In a world of increasing anxiety and spreading horror vacui, it is reassuring and rewarding to remind ourselves that to be empty also means to have no weights on our soul and to be light is to possess the pleasing power to soar.
