14 DAY TRIAL // Iori Tomita decided to preserve dead marine specimens by turning them into works of art with the help of chemicals and dyes. The Yokohama City based artist began experimenting with decaying corpses while he was working as a fisherman and developing his passion on the mastery of color.
The Japanese man succeeded in turning the scientific technique of preserving dead organisms into his own art series called “New World Transparent Specimens.” He created more than 5,000 specimens and has even made a few of them available for sale in local Japanese stores.
In order to create the beautiful rainbow-colored pieces, he first removes the scales and skin of the animal preserved in formaldehyde and then proceeds by soaking the organism a mixture of chemicals meant to make it transparent.
After that meticulous process, he soaks the fish in potassium hydroxide and red dye and preserve them in glycerin, notes Design Boom.
The result is actually amazing as the combination of colors and shapes gives each of the pieces a unique look. Thus, Iori is looking to shed light into a new image that people have never seen before, and he is admirably managing to attract a lot of attention on his work.
“People may look at my specimens as an academic material, a piece of art, or even an entrance to philosophy. There is no limitation to how you interpret their meaning. I hope you will find my work as a lens to project a new image, a new world that you've never seen before,” Iori Tomita says, according to Design Boom.
Some of his specimens can be purchased in select stores in Japan, but they are not available outside the country. The majority of the pieces available for sale are fish, squid and shrimp and their costs range from $20 (€14.5) to $200 (€145), but the more special, unique pieces are kept in the artist's personal collection.