​Who's Killed Painting?

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I am Japanese. I was born in 1976. At this time our society, which had been Americanized after WWII had finally become fully industrialized. As a Japanese man living in America, I feel we are losing our sense of tradition now more than ever as a byproduct of time and the forgetting of traditional fables. After I moved to America, I met artists who showed a greater interest in Japanese tradition than many Japanese people living in Japan. By way of my paintings I work to understand these trends and preserve my won cultural values, generating works that hint at a sense of modernized Japanese folklore.

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In 2015, I created a system I call Color Knitting. Working with the color knitting system I created has been helping me to understand what it means to be a Japanese person living in this contemporary world. My artwork strives to combine images specific to traditional Japanese culture and references to tropes recognizable to the world effected by consumerism. To make my Color Knitting Painting, I create patterns with paint by way of cross-hatching color and strips, creating patterns inspired by Japanese fabrics and baskets. For example, my color palette for this series has drawn exclusively from the colors of the toy I bought at Toys r us. However, these colors can be seen universally in all westernized societies. The compositions for my series of system paintings are developed entirely through Chigirie, a Japanese traditional paper collage method achieved through the tarring and gluing of colored paper to form an arrangements. While the square format of my canvases are derived from the shape of origami paper. Within my paintings, I also maintain hand-painted quality and slight irregularities/fluctuations in line to allow for a sense of what the Japanese call Wabisabi, meaning the beauty of impermanence and the balance of perfection and imperfection.

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As a Japanese painter, I work for how Asian artistic values can be contribute to the great art scene around the world. I believe painting functions differently for Asian artists. I have focused on painting since I was an art student in Japan. However, I was always asked to quit painting and peruse other means of making art by my instructors in Japan that had accepted “the death of painting,” the issue which has been declared whenever possible in Western art history since the emerge of photography and symbolized the boringly artistic ethnocentrism of Western art against the world. I also doubt that Japanese artists, such as myself have to follow the idea of “the death of painting,” the issue which always marginalizes the other ideas of painting among non-Western art because we made an appearance in Western art history after WWII: after the emerge of photography. We Japanese artists have never killed and will never kill painting because Western artists have killed painting without any concern on non-Western art. There is no necessity for me to follow “the death of painting”; otherwise, Japanese contemporary painting can never overcome to be regarded as the orientalism against Western art. I am developing my artistic ability and notion as a contemporary Japanese painter who is pursuing a crossroads and finding the great common measure between Western art and Japanese/Asian culture. This means, I am working for the establishment of the actual Japanese contemporary painting that corresponds with the entire history of painting all around the world as one of the primary human activities.

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Homeostasis

 

I have been working for interpreting the two dimensional expression of the western art by Asian ideas as a formative artist and as an ordinary Buddhist person. For that reason, what I should do is to introduce the Japanese Buddhist ideas influenced by Chinese Taoism into the methods of the western painting.

 

My art strives to achieve a homeostasis of human existence. Right now, humanity is disconnected from nature and filled with too much rationality derived from contemporary society. We are out of balance. My artistic mission is to connect my audience with a sense of nature, from which rationality isolates him or her. The reason why I am working for this formative expression is that formative art, or non-verbal expression, does not have to rely on verbal or linguistic activity, which is dominated by rationality and necessarily isolates human beings from nature. The Taoistic term “Mui Shizen,” which decisively influences Japanese Buddhism, captures the goal of my painting. “Mui” can be translated into “without willful purpose.” In Japanese, “shizen” is basically translated to “nature,” but in a Taoist context, the term “shizen” also explains the meaning of nature itself. In Asian cultures, nature means not only natural materials but also the presence that becomes itself by itself. While I am painting, I recognize the autonomy or spontaneousness of the painting appears. Once the autonomy/spontaneousness of the painting emerges, the painting in process starts to become the painting by itself. I simply add shapes and colors to the emerging form, following its autonomy/spontaneousness – art is not artificial but living: nature. A cloud is made of vapor and temperature; wind is created by the differences of atmospheric pressures. My painting is a natural phenomenon of shapes and colors on canvas because it is created by its autonomy/spontaneousness through my imagination. In this way, my formative painting strives to provide the audience with a sense of nature in order to neutralize the excessive rationality that unbalances people's daily lives.

 

 

 

Art/Nutrition

 

As a descendant of Korean immigrants, my family has only 80 years history in Japan, so I cannot deeply belong to any Japanese tradition. As a person whose family has assimilated to Japanese culture of after WWII, I have not had opportunities to feel Korean culture so much, so I’ve never felt I am a Korean person. I used to study at an art college in Japan organized by the similar style to American art education system, so after I graduated the art college, I could not adopt to any art circumstance in Japan. Therefore, I always feel I am an outsider of Japan, an outsider of Korea, and an outsider of Japanese art scene. Of course, I am surely an outsider of America even though I continue studying and working as an artist here. I am just no one because I have no place to certainly belong. However, I found that such a kind of situation proves what I am; I am always “in-between” – in between Japanese and Korean, in between Japanese culture and American art as an Asian person. I can concoct my own culture for myself as an artist rather than I grieve I have no existent culture to belong to.

 

My artwork is the attempt to mediate human and nature. Using colors and shape in the space, I work for making the chance to the essence of nature for the audience, which the people living in the excessively materialistic world tend to lose in their daily life. Such a materialistic society provides us a huge amount of amazing and attractive products through its entertainment industry, and we enjoy these products filled in our life. However, if I use some terms about food products to describe the these entertainment products, I can say that many of these entertainment products are like sweets and desserts, not so healthy, and would eventually harm us if we continue taking them too much without care. I love to compare the concept of my paintings to farming products because like vegetables, fruits, and meats, my work should contribute to humans’ health condition in some way. The farming products are produced by the collaboration of human’s technology and the natural environment and provides us a great amount of the nutrition. Even if we have developed the agricultural technology so far, we still hugely rely on the natural condition and environment to produce the farming products, and even if there are many food products created by the scientific advancement today, the organic food products are still further healthier and tastier because the farming products are the nutrition created “in between” human technology and the blessing from nature. Farming is the mediation between human and nature, and my painting is also the mediation between human and nature to provide the audience the “cultural” nutrition to maintain humans’ healthy life. I am standing in between the audience and nature to extract and show the essence of nature to people as an artist.