installation
2008
Installation with clay and ceramic
/ Shigaraki ACT
"To plow."
"Plowed earth has no outline."
At the beginning of every spring, I feel like plowing a small vegetable patch near my kiln.
As I silently plow the field, I break into a refreshing sweat, the foolish worries that had become attached to me are peeled off one by one, and being to feel better.
I am uninterested in the natural farming methods that don't require plowing.
I like to plow the earth.
The hoe hits the earth with a soft sound, and a sharp crack is opened in the soil.
The next moment, the soil is field with the dancing, squiming movement of microorganisms.
The plowed earth has no outline.
The natural order of the earth's surface has been disturbed.
The first step is to create this chaos.
It is good to being from chaos.
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2009
Installation with clay and ceramic
/ Shigaraki ACT
“Rain.”
When I was a child, I had a secret place: a rusty old shed by the rice paddies between some mountains. One day it began to rain suddenly, and I ran into the shed for shelter. The rain continued for a long time, pounding the ground.
Everything else was drowned out by the furious noise of the rain. I became feverish, and began to feel drowsy. Drifting off to sleep, I dreamed that I was slowly melting into a mire of mud and tears. Things sliding by each other; things softly swimming about; things sinking into the mud, leaving ripples in their wake…
Perhaps the fragments of anxiety and euphoria I felt for the first time that day were the memories of clay itself. Sometimes I become obsessed with that thought.
“Clay was created by rain.” I murmur these words.
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2010
Installation with clay and ceramic
/ Shigaraki ACT
“An Erection for the Banal”
More than twenty years ago, I put on a concert by trumpeter Kondo Toshinori and his band. The wild cacophony of sound blew the circuit breaker, and the entire hall was suddenly plunged into darkness. Still, the drumming went on, the excited crowd was on its feet, and Kondo’s unamplified trumpet pierced the air…When I think about it now, it seems like just another episode from long ago. But there is one thing from that night that remains vivid in my mind even today, a phrase from the copy I wrote for the concert: “getting an erection for the banal.” Strangely, unexpectedly and yet regularly, these words came to mind, seeming to urge me to seek the frontier to which they pointed.
Does it suggest the awakening of a primal feeling of ecstasy in the face of devastation, the defeat of all that is man-made? Or the shameless braying of the penis, even in an exhausted body, bound someday to wither? I am still lost in trying to find the answer.
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2012
Installation with clay and ceramic
/ Shigaraki ACT
“It’s not love.”
Interact, converse, create. Don’t insert unwarranted love into it.
The act of harmonizing, enjoying. The power of love is unnecessary.
The task of helping each other, joy, gratitude. It doesn’t result in love.
Work, work, and some die.
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2016
Installation with clay and ceramic
/Shigaraki Machinaka Art Festival
“Infinite”
A dog is digging a hole.
He rskes out the sand furiously, intensely.
But nothing is showing up.
Whether he digs although he knows nothing
would show up or he has found something we can't see.
After a round of digging, he sits with rear legs folding,
stretching front legs slowly and relaxing.
He gazes afar, narrowing his eyes.
He seems to look toward the wilderness in the infinite universe.
This scenery captures me strongly.
I have always wanted to be a dog.
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