After my art exhibition
In April I gave my private exhibition at Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi.
It was a small show place, but it seemed as if I could see the heat overflowed the
hall.
Visitors, the gallery’s staffs, my works and me, all aroused a whirl of excitement.
I held the exhibition in Tokyo after four years’ interval. During that I had had
various experiences.
At the exhibition in Okayama I had first been told that something like a gold dust
appeared on my palm that I put close to a painting.
Then I started this blog.
After that I have had some shows, and this time I could first see people who read
my blog and visited my show.
It was a happy time.
It was not especially taken up this time that something like a gold dust comes out,
but I can mostly tell who can enjoy this brief happening.
So I informed such people about this.
Two middle-edged women enjoyed most.
When I was talking with them, an elderly man spoke to me from behind; “Something
appears?”
(He is not of that type, I think.)
I said to him, “Try it yourself.”
“I don’t do it. If such a thing happened, I would wonder what a life I have had.”
It does not concern this exhibition, but I wrote to a person in the art world before,
“My works are now out of fine art,” intending to express in my blog they are
no longer applied within former fine art.
Then he said, “Art is an expression of individuals. You can not show it in galleries if
it is not art.”
But in my heart …
Whether you are pleased or regard it as worthless, appreciate or not, admire or
deny, the history of human fine art, I believe, has already progressed and can not
be turned back.
I can recall Mishima Yukio, famous Japanese novelist, once said, “Humans are born
weak and cannot live without righteousness.
A baby is not usually left crying in Japan.
Mother’s affection penetrates into our heart if not in our memory.
I suppose righteousness may be formed while one makes up for unhappiness by
affection which is imagined through a greater existence when one is left crying
alone without enjoying mother’s love, and ‘personality’ will also be generated
when you are inquired how you deal with righteousness.
Mishima Yukio was not brought up by his mother.
When art once came to be declared as a personal expression in the West, I think,
it is not a matter of an imitation of masters or examples, but it does not mean
‘a God’s expression.’ and personality was regarded as an existence that is
backed by righteousness equivalent to God.
I quoted from a blog, ‘ My brother can talk with God.’
It is telling:
A man is originally ‘a dreg’ and not a man until he comes across a woman. On the
other hand, a woman is originally ‘a sea,’ and the first sea is a mother. When a
man tries to stake his life on guarding a woman who reminds him of the same sea,
he can grow into a true man …
A soldier of the suicide squad who survived WWII told me young soldiers who lost
their lives in training died crying ‘Mom.’
There seems to have been ‘no righteousness’, nor ‘personality.’
Today this is also the same case with this country.
When you watch a large painting, I request you not to stand apart, but to stand at
intervals of 2 feet, at which your eyesight covers the whole picture.
I want you to have an image that you are inside the picture.
Something like a glittering thing as a gold dust comes to appear on the palm when
most of you stay at that place for a while without awareness of what you expect
vaguely.
In my picture I draw light particles flying in the air, which I can really perceive.
Something like a gold dust on the palm looks like a drawn light particle that comes
from the picture, which seems to directly enter your body just as food.
For me fine art is no longer what we appreciate.
It is true that it is not an expression of righteousness or personality, but it is a
place that is acquired, as I happened to be born and have grownup in Japan.
(Translated by Hitoshi Yasui)
Dragon conquered by civilization
I have a series of works titled ‘Life Force’, which are abstract-style, though
concrete for me.
I hang two sheets of back paper that are used for photography’s background,
angling a little.
I use as simple easel as possible and produce a situation where a single color
covers all view and a canvas is floating in it.
While I sit facing the canvas, …. soon I see something swaying like a vapor
in the whole background.
It looks like breathing.
It is called ‘aura’.
The sunlight is streaming directly onto the canvas in my atelier for a couple hours
toward noon.
Then I see glittering particles in the sunlight, which draw wiggling pattern
and appear and disappear immediately.
I represent them with white lines and small diamond.
I hear it is called ‘prana’.
The exhibition of Gogh was held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
from March to May 2005.
One evening it suddenly cleared up after stormy weather, there were few people
in the museum that would close before long. I could take my time
in appreciating works.
When I stood a while facing the picture, ‘Road with Cypress and Star’,
I saw aura rising along each touch of a paintbrush.
The painting is slightly large in size, 92cm by 73. It looked painted referring
sketches indoors, rather than out of doors. I can’t help considering that he painted it seeing aura.
I guess Gogh was looking at aura.
I found writings titled ‘Apocalypse of Water’ by Mr. Maki Yosuke, sociologist
in the photo book of a photographer, Mr. Sugimoto Hiroshi.
He described each culture all over the world has its myth: primitive gods and
heroes killed dragons (or snakes) and created a new order. And in some more
primitive culture in the world dragons or snakes were imagined a good creature
as a symbol of water.
Then they turned to a bad symbol in the relation between the conquered and
the conquering, but nevertheless symbols of ‘water’ are told to support the
‘world’, close it in and remain the origin of its power.
If ancient people could see aura that is whirling like a snake in the sky except
a shape of rising cloud, I guess they named it a dragon.
And when they were conquered, they lost dragon and aura as well as their culture,
which means that they were conquered by new words and consciousness.
I think they were conquered by ‘logos’, which ancient Greek created.
Gogh, who committed suicide, seems to be conquered by civilization.
(Translated by Hitoshi Yasui)
But I don’t believe the word.
There is a substance called ‘prana’.
Though its name is different, we have words in the world that express the same
substance, which is called ‘ki’ in Japan.
It means energies, principles of universe.
But I think its name and meaning would not be understood.
A word has something like a wall, which encloses it, and we cannot see the wall
when we go through it.
I feel I found a new myself once I go inside a new word through its wall.
A word, prana, seems to be outside the walls of the words, rationality or
common sense, and prana also consists of a wall and the inner world.
But … the wall can be often transformed and we are surprised to see it has
changed before we notice it. So I think we should not believe words’ walls,
still less the words themselves.
The times when we humans have used words are only a moment, compared with
the ones when humans have existed on earth.
Few people may see prana now.
But the pattern in the Jomon era is prana itself.
(Translated by Hitoshi Yasui)
At the exhibition in Okayama
I gave an exhibition in Okayama.
“Spiritual light” From 26th, March to 1st, April 2008 At Okayama Takashimaya
Around the noon on the second day of the session, a woman in thirties visited,
and we had a chat a while.
She showed something like sand on her palm, which was shining like a lame.
I heard she is a psychic. She remedies by fortunetelling from a previous life
and has an ability of spiritual communion. Such a thing, she said, appears on
her palm when she goes to a shrine or a place where ‘spirits’ are gathering.
She said she also felt ‘spirit’ from my works.
After that her friends saw something glittering when they put hands close to
a picture.
They had had little consciousness of spirit.
This happening became known around in an intermission. There came lots
of people putting hands rather than watching pictures; women of the gallery,
a woman of a jewel shop in front of the gallery, a woman of a dry goods shop,
and people in another floor…
I don’t know the reason, but the sparkling particles came out on hands of
almost all women of all ages.
I wonder I have come somewhere to unexpected place.
I studied sculpture at university, and now on canvas covered with Japanese paper
I paint pictures with mixture of mineral pigments and acrylic paints.
I sometimes combine relief on a picture.
My picture is neither a Western painting nor a Japanese painting, moreover not
a painting nor sculpture, and at last it might be out of fine art…
I feel I have got to such a state.
(Translated by Hitoshi Yasui)