art works by XYZM
FOREST
About 10 years ago, I first visited Asiu, Miyama cho in Kyoto. The place is famous for the traditional village of houses with thatched roof by straw. It is called Kaya-buki.
I made a video work filming the virgin forest at this district. It runs about an hour. It started in the dark and gradually becomes bright. And it is end in the dark again. The forest consists of mostly natural forest and virgin forest in some parts. It means that it has never touched by human. So we can study the ecosystem how it works by its investigation.
I represent the forest as a symbol of the ecological cycle and power of nature. We can learn how lives survive with other kinds of plants, small insects, and animals. They cooperates one another. They can live together and maintain its balance.
The film is like one day of the forest from morning to the evening as a natural cycle of everyday repetition. The aim of this work is at first, I wanted to show the audience how beautiful it was.
And then I visited around there with a guide who was a researcher of plants and its ecosystem continuously working in some decades at the forest. Walking in the forest together with him,
I got a lecture from him. This was my starting point that I understood and had strong interest in ecology and crisis of ecosystem.
It is a crisis of the forest now because of changing climate of high temperature caused by CO2 gas.
The forest is dramatically changing badly now. But it is still beautiful now. There are some hundred year trees. I felt the power of nature.
On the other hand some damages caused by human became serious now. I criticized it by using nature sound (bird’s singings and cicada's sound, etc.). I over dubbed and it became unnaturally loud little by little. At last it is noisy. It implies the destruction of the natural balance for number of some kinds of animals or insects by the damage against nature.
Looking back on my life as an artist, it's hard to decide when it was at my peak. However, if there were two peaks, I think the first was when I made a series of "MIND THE GAP" works during the London era. Speaking of works, I think it's the Degree work of MA at Central Saint Martins and the project called "Exhibition On The Train", which was the next year's project that I brought my works to the underground train.
The word "MIND THE GAP" is just a gap between people with different identities. And I insist the importance of paying attention to it, and not trying to make them the same, but recognizing the differences and being different.
"MIND THE GAP"is the best expression of the concept that consistently flows in my work in London, which is a trial to make a bridge between people to be able to communicate with each other, and it symbolizes my concept of artwork.
And it's also a word taken from the underground that I use every day to school, representing my work on the theme of the art methodology itself. The same sign changes meanings when it is placed in different contexts. It was also something I tried to do.
The next project, "Exhibition On The Train," is an experiment in which the work is taken from a museum or gallery to the street and viewed in a different context, and the concept is connected from the former works.
By the way, if it is the culmination of works in London, the second peak seems be the end of the university faculty days in Japan, which is lead from "memory of life" to "transition of life", Japanese paintings with a camellia motif.
I think that the representative works are the masterpieces of the last years of the teaching era, "Transition of Life 4" and "Transition of Life 9".
At that time, I said that the theme of the work was a warning to environmental problems, especially the destruction of the natural environment, but even if I look at the work now, I can not see such a concept so much from the work.
Maybe consciously it was true, but unconsciouly I think that the plants such as trees and flowers represented myself.
I returned to Japan and became a university teacher, but at university I became a teacher of Japanese painting course, and there was a gap between Japanese paintings and the contemporary art that I have worked in London. So I suffered severely from it.
At first, I worked on the media of prints, but as long as I am a Japanese painting teacher, there was silent pressure to make works in Japanese paintings. I told myself that it is possible to express by any media, but the genre of Japanese painting is a culture that is different from contemporary art, and I felt a gap there. I tried to overcome it by trial and error. However, I was frustrated and felt despair finally.
I feel that I'm succumbing to invisible pressure that I can't express freely, I can't move myself and I can't speak by my own words. It is like the flowesr that are quietly blooming.
I have painted flowers that are alive and self-asserting by blooming silently. But I'm still desperately trying to assert that I'm alive and have desire to express something.
It may have been likened to my own figure.
At first, I drew young and beautiful flowers, but when I moved to the "transition of life" series, I began to draw withered flowers and camellias that fell to the ground.
What I was aiming for was exactly Van Gogh's sunflowers.
At that time, I was getting tired both physically and mentally, and I felt that I was gradually weakening and losing the vitality to live, so there was something that overlaps with me.
Someone described my work at that time as Wabi-Sabi. I denied it at the time, but now I can naturally accept that.
Then, I reached the limit, developed depression, collapsed, and had to quit my job. I have lost my motivation to produce art since my retirement in 2019, actually since when I left the unfinished work in 2017 at the end.
After a blank of about 5 years in 2022, after encountering NFT art, I resumed digital work production and resumed my activities as an artist, but I don't know how this will still develop, and I don't really understand the concept of the work, so I can't put it into words yet.
Eventually, the self-evaluation of what I'm doing now will be decided in the future, and I may be able to see the whole picture of my artist. But now, I just keep doing what I want to do.
I'm still not sure about the possibilities of digital art, but I feel that there are advantages that weren't in the analog era. Whether it's analog or digital, the artwork should be my act of expression, and I think it expresses my own thoughts and feelings.
My artist life is not over yet. The peak may have passed, but it is still ongoing.
Thank you for watching until the end.
XYZM 2022