'fuwa fuwa' ceramic & glass series by yusuké y. offhause

‘fuwa fuwa’: treating the plastic bottle with new materials

Over the years, Japanese-French artist Yusuké Y. Offhause has built an impressive body of work that ‘reformulates’ everyday objects by treating them with different materials. Illustrating his approach is ‘Fuwa Fuwa’, a unique object series that reimagines the shape of plastic bottles as archeological-like pieces composed of ceramic and glass, each serving as a sake bottle or fragrance diffuser.

Elaborating on his technique, Offhause writes: ‘These forms with such singular structures designed to be rigid with minimal plastic have inspired me to use them to generate new objects by changing the material that constitutes them. Instead of transparent plastic, I introduce a heterogeneous material, granular, composite, reminiscent of oxidized iron or archaeological remains underwater.’

all images © Baptiste Coulon

archaic or futuristic? exploring temporal ambiguity

For the ‘Fuwa Fuwa’ collection, the artist resorted to what he calls ‘noble materials’ — ceramic and glass — to create eight variations of a plastic bottle. Ceramic is used as a base evoking an archeological artefact and glass as the top layer that fills in the missing outline of a plastic bottle. ‘It is a matter of recalling the original form of the object by showing a ceramic archeological object conserved and crystallized with glass,’ specifies Offhause.

Every bottle presents a very unique ceramic pattern and texture at its base, with a top layer composed of green, yellow, blue, or colorless glass. Combined, these materials endow the bottles with a paradoxical aesthetic, one that is archaic and futuristic all at once. Looking at these strange-looking objects, one would have a difficulty dating them, triggering a ‘temporal ambiguity’ that strongly intrigues the artist.