Kobako: The Art of Enclosure

SANTA FE, NM – TAI Modern welcomes in the 2025 holiday season with a curatorial vignette: Kobako: The Art of Enclosure, featuring artist boxes by Jacqui Ghosin, shown alongside Japanese bamboo works from the gallery’s collection.

Jacqui Ghosin’s background is in graphic design. She earned her graduate degree from the Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland and then worked in Munich, Germany, for two years. She then returned to the States and worked for Addison Design Consultants and Landor Associates in San Francisco before opening her own firm, Design One, with two other partners. In 2016, after twenty-five successful years, she and her team retired.

Ghosin’s interest in creating boxes was sparked after seeing another artist’s works. That fascination further blossomed with the introduction to the world of Japanese silk-screened papers; a natural progression that her years of professional graphic design work was well-suited for. She says, “From there, I became intrigued with creating a ‘box’ that might not house anything inside but would, instead, yield surprising relationships. Either something unexpected would be revealed upon opening the piece, or the construction itself would be intriguing, or the inclusion of seemingly incongruous materials that were, upon reflection, quite harmonious.”

This play between incongruity and harmony is amplified with the inclusion of pieces by TAI Modern artists including Kawano Shoko (b. 1957) and Sugiura Noriyoshi (b. 1964). Prolific artists in their own rights, Kawano grew up near the ocean and always knew he would be a sculptor while Sugiura dreamt of becoming a computer engineer as a young man. Taking from the theme of enclosure, TAI Modern will focus on more traditional basket forms for this vignette. Kawano says, “What can I add to something that is already beautiful? I can express myself through this medium and continue asking the same questions, as long as someone tells me that they see beauty in my work.” We look forward to the conversations that happen between our guest artist’s work and our stable of Japanese bamboo pieces.

Jacqui Ghosin will attend the opening at 1601 Paseo de Peralta in Santa Fe on Friday, November 21, from 5-7PM, and the show will be on view until Saturday, January 3, 2026.