In his latest large-scale installation Stone on Boundary, Japanese artist Yasuaki Onishi transforms thousands of thin copper molds into a shimmering, suspended landscape. Installed at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the piece consists of roughly 5,000 copper sheets cast from river stones. Each sheet was formed through a meticulous molding process in Osaka, Japan, and later transported to Utah, where they were arranged to float in space like a shifting geological formation.
The work draws a poetic line between Osaka, a city historically tied to Japan’s copper industry, and Utah, home to one of the world’s largest open-pit copper mines. By using the same material across two distant sites, Onishi creates a dialogue between places, histories, and landscapes, embedding both industrial heritage and natural form into a single immersive structure.
Onishi has long been fascinated by the tension between objects and their surrounding spaces — exploring themes of positive and negative form, boundaries, voids, and perception. His method often involves reversing molds or suspending materials to invite viewers to look beyond the visible surface. He encourages a kind of imaginative seeing, where complete understanding remains just out of reach.
More of Onishi’s projects and his unique sculptural approach can be explored through his official website and Instagram, where his experiments with materiality and space continue to evolve.
All images courtesy of the artist and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
