PixCell Deer #24 :: WHOA

This is just - whoa.  It's beautiful, creepy, and ridiculous all at the same time.  It is the work PixCell Deer #24 by artist Nawa Kohei, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I have to go see it in person.  From the Met's website:

This taxidermied deer has been completely transformed through the artist’s use of variably sized “PixCell” beads, a term he invented. PixCell is a portmanteau word combining the idea of a “cell” with that of a “pixel,” the smallest unit of a digital image. Whether intentionally or unintentionally on the artist’s part, PixCell-Deer#24 resonates with a type of religious painting known as a Kasuga Deer Mandala, which features a deer—the messenger animal of Shinto deities—posed similarly with its head turned to the side, and with a round sacred mirror on its back. For painters of the Rinpa school, the deer was depicted often as a companion of ancient sages and had auspicious or poetic associations.

 Brings me back to this, an amazing day in Nara, Japan in 2006.  Feeding deer in the park (and wrestling with them to get back our map).