When I say “I like cute and small things,” people think of all the features of childishness only concerned with superficial appearances. But there is a reason why kawaii (cute? perhaps) can be a brand in itself; something more than appearances is occasionally seen in its ingenuousness which I might be able to describe as unconscious. Despite the absence of depth below the surface, there is some kind of(social?) stratification to be found. This is what came to my mind when I saw the subtle yet powerful ‘surfaces’ created by Satomi Kashio.
Statement
The paintings for Another Function reflect my interest in traditional Japanese arts and crafts. On previous visits to Japan I have seen many beautiful things that have had a major influence upon me: I found art, architecture and gardens to be powerful sources of inspiration, both formally and poetically. My paintings are clearly inspired by the visible world yet remain firmly rooted within abstraction, employing the restraints of a ritualistic and ordered process embedded within the sensual physicality of oil paint.
作者の言葉
Another Functionのための今回の作品は、伝統的な日本の美術工芸に対する私の関心を反映したものです。私はこれまでの日本訪問で、私に大きな影響を与えた多くの素晴らしいものに出会いました。私は、日本の芸術、建築、庭園が、形相的に、また詩的にインスピレーションの強力な源泉であると気付きました。
私の絵は明らかに目に見える世界の影響を受けていますが、抽象概念の内にしっかりと定着したままなのです。それは油絵の具の官能的な物性を深く心に留め、儀式化した自制心と秩序ある制作工程を用いることなのです。
It was Walter Pater, the British aesthete in the late 19th century who definitely said : “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.”As far as painting is concerned, this means that the ideal of painting (or human being) should consist in the symphonic harmony of colors and forms.
Given the gloomy social circumstances today, I dare say, what is one of the most fascinating in the colorful, so rich and clear realization of the sea (or landscape) by Emiko Aoki, would be based on the harmonious manner how “the first color invites other ones as friends.” That is where I intend to find the hope itself more than anything.
Imagine leaving the glittering town behind, wandering through the plain aimlessly and then coming across the never-ending gigantic wall. Is that the moment that I do exist inside the boundary of something or outside of it? To begin with, the whole idea is open to the question on how to define the inside and the outside. When it comes to think about the boundary, I always stand still facing ambiguity of this subject of definition to which Jordan Curve Theorem has somehow managed to give an answer mathematically.
About two years ago, Natsuko Kurihara drew a picture of a man whose head looked like a melon or a watermelon. I suppose she is an artist who works on the border.
ROER’S STATEMENT
For nearly 40 years I have made my work using the same method. By over-exposing direct sunlight through a small hand-held lens, images of the sun are burnt onto discarded wood.I work outside on the ground and under the sky. In these solitary, still moments with the wood on my lap, the outer visual world no longer occupies my mind.Thoughts are reduced to a minimum and what occurs is a quality of engagement to an inner indefinable realm of the human spirit.I know that what is made from this simple, concentrated ritual is held within the work itself.This presence can be re-absorbed through the senses and the eye. A silent non-negotiable realm of human experience; a vibration of the soul’s life.Like many others for thousands of years, I believe that insight can be seen and rekindled through a pragmatic dialogue with material.
Roger Ackling, summer 2009
text
We are living in a world where the human relations have been complicated and cryptic. Each one of us looks like an isolated chamber protected by a fine film that is fragile and prone to get hurt. No! Not true! The voice is echoing in the air to deny the idea but we find the tone is unconvincing.
“I keep on creating my works with a sheer desire to experience the ties” says Nozomi Watanabe. The world, however, would all of sudden transform into a divine revelation, an enigma or a vision on the silver screen only to leave us further behind. The distance we are apart is the reality we face.
Kunio Motoe
texst
How was sculpture born? While no one can give a definitive answer to that question, reddish jasper rocks found in 3-million-year-old strata in Southern Africa suggest that Australopithecus, considered to be the oldest ancestor of human beings, was keenly interested in carving. The impressions, natural or artificial, made in those rocks bear a striking resemblance to faces.
Impressions or depressions are both eloquent and vital. Sculpture is an art form where existence is pushed away against emptiness or nothingness. Tomotsugu Manabe’s working method simply by pressing handprints on plastic substances conjured up this idea in my mind.
Kunio Motoe
履歴
2002 Maija Pellonpää-Forss
The Textile Artist of the Year 2002 in Finland by an exhibition in Design Forum called “Space Junk”.
2002 Tarja Trygg
Doctorate degree on “solargraphy” including a survey on the move- ments of the arch of the sun at various places all over the world.
2007
Their idea of the joint exhibition was born in 2007 when they were
carrying out teacher exchange in Tama Art University in Tokyo that is a strong and long term collaboration partner of TAIK.
2009 Maija Pellonpää-Forss
The latest publication of hers is coming out in March,
Photo by Tarja Trygg. http://www.solargraphy.com
TEXT
It is a collaboration exhibition by solargraphy and the textile printing.Words called solagraphy are unfamiliar words.This artist Tarja Trygg is a godparent of words called solagraphy.It is the expression of the picture record to print a solar trace to photographic paper directly by a pinhole camera (it uses the thing which drilled canned film in consideration of simplicity and the durability).They achieved a visit to Japan from Finland in 2007.They developed a workshop for two weeks in Tama Art University and gained a great success on this occasion.A lot of pinhole cameras ware dispatched for the photography of the picture record by the solar graph one month before they visit to Japan.The student took a photorecording by a camera set according to instructions for one month.They made the original picture based on solagraphy and performed printing on cloths, gave comment party in persiennes afterwards.It becomes the collaboration exhibition of two of the authority this time.
“A soliloquy”-Masayuki Owa-
For old days, did a psychological joyride by the animal with Mr. Masayuki Owa; the animal he chose was an Okinawa rail on this occasion.
The reason why he chose it as seems not to be readily found. The point of this joyride is the reason. It seems to be yourself judging from the glance of another person.
Mr. Owa told the story of the lecture that he attended was given the other day when he visited Another Function. It seems to have talked “The soliloquy” by a famous thinker.
“Soliloquy”, there to leave naturally does not have the affection. Somebody hears “the soliloquy” to come out to mutter. The person must be surely touched by it.
Mr. Owa has a glance like the amateur always, and he said that I wanted to make a work like “a soliloquy”.
It is the reason why it is difficult to find it very much, indeed when it does not listen carefully well.
TEXT
One views a painting and feels its colors. It might sound too simple. But there should be a field or depth to be transparent so that one’s gaze could pass through it, just like in the case of appreciating an artificial flower immersed in the water. Can the painting itself embody this field or depth? Won’t it amplify the brilliance of the colors?
Cousteau Tazuke takes acrylic plates, as if they were reminiscent of the water, and makes exquisite and delicate coloring on them. Isn’t it a miracle, then, that we can feel the slightest shimmering of the light in the depths of the water?
text by Kunio Motoe
TEXT
There is a sign of darkness as the lights go off indoors.
The white light shining from the display, softly pushes back the night, making a small relieving place.
The appearing characters are eternally observing.
The entire world shines under a white light, as if endlessly far away.
They are us. Someone you do not know, and a person from the next generation.
Yusuke Tsuchida, is one person who had the insight and found that we are not an exception, and that everyone shines under a white light.
At this second exhition, we finally clearly see the full picture of his viewpoint.
text by Shuhei Takahashi
TEXT
What is space? In the painting converging on the two-dimensionality, or being in its neighborhood , this is the ultimate question. Space may be concealed or quite present in our daily life. But close your eyes. Then, you’ll feel that there might be space within yourself.
For Maruko Ishigami, the first thing to do is to create miniature furniture and animals out of paper clay. They will reappear as motifs in her paintings. Space, first captured and transformed into a body by her own fingers, is then reconfigured or recognized in her paintings, with the effect of appearing through the surface. This must be an answer to the ultimate question: what is space?
text by Kunio Motoe
TEXT When searching for something on a personal computer, you may become frustrated because whatever you desire is slow to appear on the screen. An image may emerge gradually in strips and this may indeed be what we see in reality. Miri Tamari’s paintings teeter on the brink of disclosure. Images remain latent, barely perceptible like something exuded from a plastered wall. It might be one aspect of a submerged entity. Odd prominences tempt one to touch. You can’t help but become curious about what lies behind the wall.
text by Kunio Motoe
TEXT
The German word “Heim” means home but its adjectival form “heimlich” also means ”secret or clandestine. That is enough to make one wince. Almost every home has a secret ,and something that is apparent but invisible. I can also become the other who is “me”. (Who are you in the mirror?) Why is there something and why is there someone? Seeing something strange created by Aya Suzuki casually and modestly lurking in a corner of a room, I wondered why.
text by Kunio Motoe
TEXT
Whereas Western-style line drawing is more or less representational, “lines” or the line in Japanese paintings are thoroughly ontological. They are neither simple contours of objects or motifs nor signs . Time and space extend and echo in a line as if another world — “the sky within a pot” ,for example, narrated by an old Chinese folklore — is being created there. It reminds one of Sen no Rikyu (great initiator of tea ceremony) gathering all the morning glories that were in full bloom in the garden, but arranging just a single bloom in the tokonoma (alcove) to welcome Toyotomi Hideyoshi. So, the crocodile drawn by Takushi Hibino is not just a crocodile but the fact itself of “crocodile being in the world”.
text by Kunio Motoe
グループ展
2001/ Exposition des artistes d échange à l École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Marseille マルセイユ美術学校 フランス
2006-2007/ 「みることのよろこび」府中市美術館・常設展示室
2007/ アートフェア東京 東京国際フォーラム・wada fine arts 有楽町
※その他、個展を中心に国内外で発表多数
TEXT
Perspective, particularly linear perspective, is evidence of intelligence. (Young children do not appreciate it.) What sharply retreats beyond our vision is a form of sorrow, a reminder of separation and estrangement, unconscious passing, or alas!, just a mirage . (Think of the boulevard in The Third Man or the bleak room in Citizen Kane!) Here is the secret of the pathos concealed in Keiko Sakamoto’s clear yet dense and unemotional yet sensual landscapes (with numerous strips of foreign cloth affixed!).
text by Kunio Motoe
グループ展
2003/ 「第28回全国大学版画展」買い上げ賞 町田市立国際版画美術館
2006/ 「第14回プリンツ21グランプリ展」 東和ギャラリー 銀座
2007/ 「the 6 International Biennial of Engraving Liege」 Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art ベルギー
International Print Triennial Oldenburg」 Horst Janssen Museum ドイツ
TEXT
There is a short story, possibly by Apollinaire, about a man who is just a shadow. It is set around the time of the First World War. His shadow hovers over his own tombstone, weeping in sorrow. There is a substance and there is a shadow(Dracula is not reflected in a mirror). Since the shadow and the substance are a pair, skin colors, shapes and subtleties of the alive must be concealed in the silhouette. Consider thata person illuminated by a sharp flash would leave no more on the Earth than a mark, a mere shadow. —Kanako Watanabe’s exquisite half-light vision embraces something astonishingly profound.
text by Kunio Motoe
TEXT The most marvelous, marvelous thing about light is that since we do not know much about it, we want to know more of it. It is not just looking at the light,but how the light merely looks according to the light that shines. Where does light come from? It is not light as we know, as when the wind blows across and shakes the leaves off of trees. Light is very obvious. As for the hue, as it shifts, it is of light and light reflections, and its countless connections. Aya Takagi says, “I try to obtain and draw all of the colors which are hidden in the light.” Could there be more to an ambitious drawing than to capture light?
text by Kunio Motoe
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