Sculpture as Amniotic Membrane
Thoughts and practice regarding sculpture as a medium that connects the subject with the world.
Yasufumi Takahashi
I am a see-er with moving body; my body holds things in a circle around itself; it is situated at the center of the world. Things are a prolongation of the body; the world is made of the very stuff of the body. Moreover, my moving body makes a difference in the visible world, being a part of it; that is why I can steer it through the visible. I do not appropriate what I see; I am caught in the fabric of the world.
Introduction
In the past “I” was a part of the world. And when I was born into the world from within the transparent amniotic fluid from within the womb, “I” became something that was detached from this world into the world outside. Before long, through my amniotic membrane = sculptures, I began my attempts to establish connections between these two worlds.
In as far as all human beings are born into the world in corporeal forms, the subjects become detached from the world. Our corporeity serves as a subject as well as an object of demarcation with the external world and, at the same time, it is a medium that ties together both worlds. My “sculpture” is my attempt to seek out and give form to the ambiguity of the flesh and the world and the mutually interdependent relationships that develop immediately as this corporeity comes into contact with physical matter.
The phenomenological philosophy of M. Merleau-Ponty influenced many western artists during the 1970s with regard to the involvements between corporeity and the world. It is a well-known fact that those who were especially active in what is commonly referred to as “Minimal Art” often invoked this philosophy in their embodiments of their ideas and feelings in their execution of their works. We might also be considered to be the descendants of these artists, and it cannot be said that the main discourse in this paper bears no relationship to this particular problem. Already a large volume of literary discourse, research and discussions has appeared in the literature dealing with elements of space, corporeity, and cognizance in art.
However、let’s take a look at the DIA museum in Beacon offering the very best spaces for the works of the minimalists, and the old Judd Studio in Soho. The “see” experience in current space, as a means for understanding some sort of expression as a simple means for achieving an objective, should not be considered as something subsidiary. Rather, the “seeing” of the perceptual experience itself should serve as a method of becoming aware of the newness. This is the catalyst that activates perceptual experience. When the viewers consider the abstract expressionist paintings from which the minimalists had learned were merely lessons taught by negative example as works that had eliminated both substance and meaning, there is nothing better than enjoying the experience with one’s naked eyes and corporeity when viewing works if they are able to discard all unrelated discourse and preconceived notions. All one needs to do is to take a walk through a garden. We should be content to experience the world around us solely by looking at it from an objective and physical perspective, rather attempting to become cognizant of what emerges from our examinations of this world. In spite of this, there are still many who claim to “know” the work that they are seeing simply by seeing only the work itself.
The minimalists, in the process of further purifying the relationships that exist between the object and perception leave the motion of the body up to others, and only by seeing the work do they become the creators. This is the approach of architecture. Conceptual art is development to the full extent for the artist. The fact that Sol LeWitt was I. M. Pei’s
draughtsman has received relatively little attention, but his methods of creation, similar to those of a designer, are very convincing anecdotes for most of us.
For me personally, it is a matter of employing the “seeing” subject and, at the same time, the “physical”, “substantial” constituents that can be found within the subject matter itself. In other words, I see myself as the maker of the work of art at hand. While I am, as a result, the first person ever to view my completed work, each work remains continuously a work still in progress in as much as it is created both in physical terms as well as in the eyes of all its beholders. Eyes and body... Corporeity works to establish connections between these eyes and the world, as a subject of the work. Sculpture is another name for the rivalry that arises between the eyes and the body. My thoughts and practices regarding sculpture are all carried out on one floor, on one worktable surface. The plans and the actual construction of my works are carried out through divisions of labor quite similar to what is found in the fields of minimal art and architecture. As the gist of my discourse, my sculptures are the results of a continual aeration of my thoughts and practice in a continuing search for ways to relate the three elements of the flesh and the world and sculpture. Since discussions of one’s self-execution of his/her own actual works as an artist such as I are extremely rare, and generally of poor writing quality, I believe that, in due course of time, their significance should eventually become apparent.
1. My sculpting position - from within -
An examination of the relationships between the flesh and the world in sculpting reveals that the sculptural materials are all substances that are a part of the real world. As the artist, whenever I, repeat my examinations of these relationships, the demeanor of how I can become truly involved with these substances is inevitably called into question. In the space of my studio, when I am confronting the sculpture that will eventually surface from the materials, and subject of this relationship, my experience tells me that in creating sculptures, the role of positioning is extremely important. A comparison of western and Japanese art emphasizes the tendency toward abandonment during the sculpting of the work and the artist’s positioning. This tendency, in turn, leads to a decisive influence that cannot afford to be neglected with respect to the method of expression of both sides of the work. Positioning reflects the style of the artist in terms of the connections he creates between the major constituents and the world, and there are two forms of positioning that are worthy of consideration.
Prior to the acquisition of modern creating techniques in the west during the early years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), Japanese artists would sit on the floor or on tatami mats as they produced their works of Japanese art, whether it was painting, sculpting, craftwork, with no regard to their media of expression. I would like for you to look at some of the Japanese-style paintings and wooden sculptures from those years. Then I would ask you to contemplate the creation of oil paintings and statues from the field of western art, which were created as the artists were standing, not sitting. They would put their works in progress on easels and turntables as they worked. The differences in the positioning of the artists gave birth to much more than simple disparities in their materials, tools and techniques. As they worked on their projects at hand and as they watched their works progress, the positional relationships of the artists to their works would regulate the angles of the movement of their eyes and arms as well as their speed and rhythm、the strengths and weakness of their touches、the dimensions and the duration of time they might spend at any particular location.
This is what led to differences in methods of artistic expression, and by extension, in any attempt to achieve a grasp of these differences between western and Japanese-style works, thinking merely that an awareness of weltanschauung and how one might perceive the world was responsible for influencing differences could be considered as mere nitpicking. When we consider the differences in the positioning of the artists of both styles, it could also be claimed that these differences serve as the bases of the relationships that exist between the subject of their work and the world within the large framework of western and Japanese artistic expression.
Until the modern period, there was a strong influence of frontality in the sculpture coming out of Japan, and the subtle creation of an awareness of space while sitting on the floor must have made it quite difficult for the sculptors in their attempts to survey their work while maintaining distance from their work constantly from all four directions. However, at the same time, this must have also made it possible for them to come in touch with the world from the inside of the works as subjects of their sculptures. With the artist and his work both on the floor, their nearness (proximity) to each other could not have helped to achieve a god-like perspective in any way similar to a bird’s eye view from the world outside. Thus the objective and subject of the work could be achieved only through a unified connection rather than the dual perspective of sculptures from the west. With regard to the perspective of the world as found in western paintings, this led to the interposition of a cut-away frame between the subject and world. But in each Japanese painting of the upper body, the image planes tended to be muffled due to the nearness to the work of the posture being drawn. And it allowed the artist to create a rambling sensation into the image plane and an undifferentiated relationship between the world and the subject that defied being cut off and seen separately.
And now, I wish to comment on my own positioning. There are two things that have been on my mind. The more distant of the two is the era during which people relied solely upon their own eyes and body in order to acquire their perceptions of the world around them. During the 15th to the 10th century BC, primitive hunters painted murals on the walls of caves in Altamira, Spain, and Lascaux, France. These early artists painted their bison and horses on the surfaces of the rock walls of these womb-like caves where the rays of the sun could not penetrate. There can be no mistaking the fact that the painting of these animals, lit as they were by the shadowy light of bonfires showed how they had been shot with arrows as blood dribbled from their wounds. This brings home clearly what must have been the eyes and in the minds of these hunters as they painted their works. It is in these caves that we can clearly see the undifferentiated relationships between man and his world. The nearer of the two begins with the works of Jackson Pollock that were inspired by the sand paintings native Americans.
A consideration of sculpture, regardless of its era or any cultural influences, regardless of whether the sculptor may have been standing or sitting as he created his works, regardless of how he confronted his works in progress makes it necessary for me to cast the corporeity of my subjects into my works in order to create my art, much like the pictures drawn on the rock walls in these ancient caves, and similar to the way that Pollock must have been literally absorbed in his works that were on his canvases. I must avoid, at all costs, trying simply to create an object. The corporeity of the artist, as a subject of a sculpture, must enter into the sculpting materials and assume sculpting positions for the sculpture to function as a medium connecting the relationships between corporeity, the sculpture and the world. We cannot afford to look at the sculpture from a worldly perspective. We should not examine the sculpture as an object from its exterior; rather we should strive to grasp the relationships that exist by looking inside the work.
2. The position of the sculpture -position, function, means-
In other words, my sculpture serves as an actual medium involved with world from my sculpting position. When used in art terminology, the term “medium” refers to the materials and the techniques, with a meaning that can include terms such as “intermediary”, “agency” and “media”. It is a word that, when taken together, refers to “position”, “function” and “means”. “Medium”, then refers to “what stands between A and B, what provides shape to the materials, and what connects A and B together”. Here, then, if we can assume that A = subject, and B = the world, this implies that “medium is the thing that stands between the subjects and the world giving shape to the materials and connecting them in some sort of relationship”. This is the kind of positioning and function that I look for in sculpture. In fact, sculpture is what stands between the subjects and the world as a means for providing shape to material as an agency we call “medium”for the subjects and the world we call medium”
At first, I determine my sculpting position and then clarify the positioning of the sculpture and its function. In that case, one might ask what my means for the sculpture might be. What kind of materials and techniques might emerge in my sculptures between the world and me? While many minimal artists often utilize materials such as metals, stone, earth, concrete, glass, etc., for me all of these materials are too hard, too dry, and too hard-edged.
As mediums that I consider for connecting the subjects and the world in sculpture, for example I prefer moist, soft skin or the amniotic membrane that surrounds the fetus in its mother’s womb. I am the fetus that clings to a knee in the womb. Ontogenesis is the reiteration of phylogeny. I reiterate phylogeny in art in order to connect to the world within the amniotic membrane as sculpture. The texture of the materials utilized in sculpture, and the position of the materials within the world form an ideal amniotic membrane. Previously I mentioned the importance of the positioning between the sculpture materials and the artist during the sculpting process, buts it should also be noted that the position of the sculpturing materials within the world is also of equal importance. What, then, of the texture and position of the amniotic membrane, the material texture of that moist, soft membrane that envelops me? What about the substance with the closest position to corporeity that lies between corporeity and the world? This can be found in apparel. How about ragged clothes? It follows, then, that these clothes, worn by me as a part of my corporeity, were also a part of the world. The position of the apparel worn on a body, in addition to the corporeity of the body dressed in the clothes, and the ambiguity of the world serve as a hinge in this mutually interdependent relationship.
The discovery of this material we call “apparel” eventually,
through sculpture, guides us along as an emerging medium that connects me with the world. In light of the above, and from the perspective of my own sculpting position , I would like to expand upon this theory accordingly. With regard to techniques, I will deal with them in the following section in successive order.
3. Thoughts and practice on sculpture as a medium with regard to my own work
Red Reflection - Reflecting water - In the summer of 1995, I left the studio and discarded all of my sculpting materials as I headed off to Est-Nord-Est Sculpture Center in Quebec, Canada. I spent the whole summer working on sculptures for an exhibition to be held at the SKOL Art Center in Montreal. My materials are my own apparel. The sculpting position consists of entering within the work as I sculpt. I made up my mind about these two important points and prior to leaving Japan. I began to work on my sculptures as soon as I arrived. My studio surrounded by white walls was approximately 7m by 4m and 3m high. The floor was made of concrete. The apparel that I had sent from Japan included the underwear I wore from the time I was a baby and that my mother had kept. I felt that
creating works that would connect with the world through the amniotic membrane texture of these clothes, seemed to require some sort of baptismal process. For the fetus to emerge into this world, I felt that there should be an ensuing shedding of blood. Therefore I decided to dye the white underwear with blood-like red. I spread the apparel out on the concrete floor and sat in the middle of the material as I started sewing things together. I began this work without determining any overall picture, and the work that I had been sewing together soon grew to be much larger than I was. It was almost as if I had entered within my work in progress as I continued to sculpt inside this small studio. Before long, the amount of material in my apparel became insufficient so I gathered old clothes available nearby and began to sew these items into my sculpture, beginning from within the work and gradually moving outward in all directions. When there was no longer any available floor space, I began to utilize the walls as I sewed. The distance to the back of the studio was 4m and before long the floor and the walls were entirely covered with my work. It became quite difficult to maintain a total perspective of the work from my angle of visibility. It was a position, however, that I felt was approaching that of the primitive people who had painted on the cavern walls, and of Jackson Pollock.
From a window looking out to the west of my studio in Quebec, I could see the grand Saint Lawrence River nearby as its waters worked their way towards the Atlantic Ocean. In the twilight, the summer sun remained in the western sky for an unbelievably long time as it dyed the sky and sea crimson, before it would eventually sink beyond the peninsula on the other side of the river. The sea and sky… The horizontal and the vertical… And the sun, straddling both aspects… And here in my studio, the blood red fabrics circle of old clothes sewn together and straddling the floor and the walls. Corporeity connected to the floor, perspective connected to the walls… From the corporeity to the floor, from the floor to the walls, and on out to wards the world… There is a horizon made by the floor and the walls. It is a hinge that connects corporeity and the world. I was able to envision an image of a circle of red fabric vertically immersed in the broad space of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Japanese archipelago and the North American continent. Whether it is seen from Japan or from the North American continent, what one would see would be a deep crimson reflecting off the surface of water. The sunrise over the Japanese archipelago is the sunset as seen from the North American continent. The ambiguity of the sun…
In the autumn, the walls of the SKOL Art Center in Montreal had just been repainted in white and the vivid crimson of my work reflected throughout this space. My work seemed to rise up from the floor along the walls from the feet of those who, in the process of viewing my sculpture appeared, to be cloaked within. A red semi-circular form faces the hinge, located along the boundary between the floor and the walls. The contour of the semi-circle is jagged and point-cut, and the chemises and robes on the wall have been puckered to create the sagging image of a waterfall. The sleeves and hems of shirts seem to flow out from within the semi-circle on the floor infiltrating all the way to the feet of the viewers. And when I return to Japan, I am welcomed by the end of 50 years since the end of World War II.
Strata - Cleansing Box - Purifying water -
The Chikuho coalfields of Kyushu were abandoned in 1997. These were the last of the Japanese coalmines to be closed down. Coverage by television and newspapers showed images of the bygone days when men with faces blackened by the coal dust coming back up to the surface of the earth from deep under the ground for the last time. These images remained deeply ingrained in my mind. I often wondered if these black hunters from underground could have been the descendants of the hunters who had painted the pictures of bison on the walls of the caves in Altamira Deep from within those low, narrow mine shafts, I could sense a black gloom assembled from the coal black faces of the miners swinging their pickaxes, while aboveground before my very eyes that black gloom turned into lumps of flame during the winters of my
childhood. I could witness with my own eyes that it was my responsibility to gather and discard of the ashes from burned out black rocks. I often thought about how these ashes would be buried in holes dug in the ground, sinking eventually deep into the ground where they would remain for centuries, and how, in the course of time, they would reemerge as lumps of coal. I would fantasize about a circulating world located directly underneath the school ground in the center of the wooden buildings of my elementary school. I could imagine how the tunnel entrance that connects Japan to the world underground would be shut tight.
In order to connect my own corporeity with the world below, I would try to envision an inversion of both sides of the surface of the world, from aboveground and below. I would lie on my stomach and spread my arms out wide, nearly 180 cm lengthwise and crosswise. Then I would start to dig up this square space perpendicularly from the surface below my body down towards whatever might lay below. I thought that maybe I could penetrate the coal layers with a vertical shaft. I would dig 10m, 100m, 1,000m, planning eventually to break through a solid black layer of coal. Next, by using the surface of the earth as a hinge, I could sense an inversion of the void space of this vertical shaft reaching down into the earth. I would enclose myself in these kinds of fantasies.
However, I came to realize that this kind of perceptual experience in a place close to me. The place is Oya-machi in the city of Utsunomiya. Here we could find the Oya Rock Quarry, a huge square shaft large enough to contain an entire building bored into the earth. As I climbed down the flights of stairs clinging precipitously to the rock walls of the quarry, I discovered a void space so broad here in the bowels of the ground that I felt it might be the remains of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. It seemed mistakenly more like an actual stone building that had been constructed on the surface. I found it puzzling to achieve an awareness of whether the rectangular void spreading out overhead might be a rim on the earth’s surface, or whether the place I was actually standing was the earth’s surface. In the next moment, when it seemed that the rough surface under my feet might be a hinge that was causing me to rise backwards towards that overhead rectangular void that served as a lid that covered the earth’s surface. I was hanging upside down like a bat in this pitch dark underground space with my feet firmly planted on the surface. The volume of the space leading to the ground above that I had just seen was now only a reflection that created an exact copy of a pitch-black void. This perceptual experience guarantees my sculpting.
It’s time to begin sculpting. Already I had been lying on my stomach and spreading my arms out wide over a surface on which the top and bottom were being inverted. This time, the apparel must undergo coalification in order to form my sculpture as the amniotic membrane. Dying it black alone will not be sufficient. I must achieve the color as well as the hardness, the feel, and the smell of coal. I had to impregnate coal tar, with old clothes and let it harden. I build up geological layers in four directions using clothes aligned along with the wire mesh framing the 180 cm square of my own corporeity. In so doing, I was cautious to lay old clothes on face up inverting my body like a ridgeline in parallel lamination, because the amniotic membrane encasing me should trace over my own form. This amniotic membrane made from old clothes would repeatedly undulate in a vertical direction over a figure similar to my own corporeity, as the aboveground-inverted underground world moves closer towards creating a connection.
As corporeity of the subject is comprehended, an infinitely expanding sculpture becomes identical to the world. For this reason, the sculpture must take on the appearance of a single section of the successive “all-over” layers at its own discretion. I must be careful to avoid creating a closed object within the world. That is because the sculpture must function as a medium standing between the subjects and the world. And the sculpture should not be viewed from the perspective of the outside world.
The tunnel eventually fills up with water. In order for the descendants of the black hunters underground to be reconceived into the world, the tunnel must be filled with transparent amniotic fluid. At that time, this sculpture becomes an implement for purifying water.
Hot Bed - Another Skin -
The summer of 2000… From August 16, the date of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, I exhibited my work at the “Hiroshima Art Document 2000” held at the A-bombed. The exhibition site is the old Army Clothing Depot. There are also 4 large red brick warehouse still remaining on the site. Each building constructed in 1913 is 94 m. long and 17 m. high. This was quite an enigmatic encounter for me. Here in the production facility for military uniforms I was to create a sculpture using apparel. I made a preliminary inspection of the site. The exhibition site was to be outside of the warehouses, but I wanted to see what was inside and I worked my way in through an open window, only to discover disappointment. Inside, I found nothing but empty space and darkness. If you think about it, it was as it should be expected, but the fact that the building was still standing after the dropping of the A-bomb is indeed miraculous. Immediately after the bombing the building was turned into a makeshift first-aid station where many of the bombing victims spent their final hours. Lengthy stays for victims were out of the question.
The heat rays created by the small sun of the nuclear blast were so hot they twisted steel bars and burned the clothes of the bodies of the victims leaving only charred skin on the corpses. Skin covered with terrible blisters from the burns peeled off the bodies and hinge-like fingernails were inverted and hanging off fingertips. Could there possibly have been a more vivid encounter between corporeity and the world? I found peeled skin inside the glass bottles that I saw at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The skin found between the corporeity and the world should have been warm and moist in this preserved state, but it transformed the stiff material that was now a part of the world.
As it turned out, what I had encountered during this inspection tour of Hiroshima was human skin rather than apparel. This left me in a position to attempt to create “another skin”, a sculpting material much closer to corporeity than apparel. This meant forming corporeity directly from latex. Latex is the basic ingredient of rubber, and since the 1960s, artists such as Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois and others have been using it to create their works of art. By shrouding fabrics and plaster with latex, they desire to create something quite similar to human skin that can lead to deceptive results. Eva Hesse tried to achieve the emergence of the dermal membrane itself within the exhibition space by using latex, but the milky liquid form of latex is just like paint since it cannot be used to cover space without the support medium of canvas. By necessity, she was forced to use gauze and fiberglass for her coatings of latex as a transparent support medium.
At first, I was determined to do away with this annoying support medium for my latex membranes. Because of these support mediums, it is necessary to avoid thinking in terms of sculptures as “objects” since the mediums that lie between subjects and the world must function as the amniotic membrane. Another consideration involves the positioning of the artist during sculpting. The corporeity of the artist, as a subject of a sculpture, must enter into the sculpting materials and assume sculpting positions for the sculpture to function as a medium connecting the relationship between corporeity, the sculpture and the world. You must not attempt to create a sculpture from a worldly perspective.
I was able to find a way to solve both of these problems at the same time. I could let my own corporeity serve as the support medium and enter the latex membrane myself. I could apply a coating of the latex in its milky liquid form with a brush over the upper half of my body, like a face pack, and after it would dry, I could repeat the process. Once this pack reached sufficient strength, I could make a vertical cut in the back section and I could remove myself through the cuffs just as we remove our clothes, by reversing them. Then, with the area around my wrists serving as a hinge, I could turn “another skin” inside out, and my skin would appear in its mirror image, and separating out toward the world side. And, as before, wrapped up as I was, the exterior space would become encapsulated in the latex membrane, and on another front the inside of my skin could be exposed to exterior space allowing a changeover of interior and exterior space to occur. This simple and direct method would serve to elevate the
sensitivity of my own perception of the ambiguous relationship between corporeity and the world, providing the yet-to-come perceptual experience with a marked brilliance.
By preparing approximately 20 layers of this manmade, latex skin and connecting them to form a dome-shaped tent, I was able to gather this exterior space inside the work, expanding it like a taut rubber balloon that became my “another skin”. Then, on my behalf, I released silkworms within the space inside the work. Since the heat of the summer was rapidly causing the silkworms to die, I altered this effect by playing a video of silkworm images recorded from television. The silkworm footage appeared amongst tears in the rubber skin of my abdominal region. Then, over the 2-week run of this exhibition that began on August 16, exposure of the dome to the blistering sun of the Hiroshima summer caused my rubber skin to literally melt away. More than anything else, I wanted to recapture this skin from the world to the side of corporeality. Sometime I want to do another sculpture in which I can gather the skin of Hiroshima and transplant it as a replacement for my skin that melted away during these 2 weeks. I made a latex mold of the rusted and distorted iron door from the Old Army Clothing Depot and the victimized tree on the grounds of the Chiyoda Elementary School. The amount of this Hiroshima skin is still not sufficient so I am waiting, in my studio, until it becomes a sculpture.
Passage - Water Prism -
Under the water in a swimming pool, one can see mysterious scenes that cannot be seen in other circumstances. The lower half of the body immersed into the water surface … Arms flailing… We can’t see a face. Looking up from below the water, the wavering, undulating water surface reflects the world outside as if we were looking through a prism, making it look dispersed, distorted and disconnected. From the bottom of the pool to the surface of the water, slowly rising by laying face up and floating towards the surface, this surface cuts away your own face and chest leaving them behind like islands without a single connection to be seen – segmentalized corporeity.
When I went to see George Segal’s exhibition, I also participated in a workshop. I made a medical cast of my face. Making a similar cast of my body proved to be impossible for me to do on my own, but with the assistance of my wife, the two of us began to try. After gradually wetting this thin cast down with hot water, it masked my face. Before long, my face began to change into a stiff material as my skin started to adhere to the inside of the cast. And as my corporeity began to separate toward the world side, I experienced the emergence of a strange sensation in which, through a process of elimination, only the subject remained stranded in a sea of consciousness.
In a swimming pool, I recalled this strange experience that I had at this workshop. I wore a floating device so that I would not sink, and as I floated in the water I closed my eyes and concentrated on my skin. I spread my arms wide so that my arms would have no contact with my body, and in my mind I began a limitless tracing of the skin all over my body. Next, I tried to imagine the water within my body seeping into the water of the pool through the permeation membranes of my skin. Before long, the boundary between my skin and the water disappeared, as my body literally melted into the water leaving only the subject floating in the world. This is how I would describe this experience. As the subject and the world divide, my corporeity disappears leaving only the subject floating in the world. I am once again the fetus clinging to a knee in the womb.
The summer of 2002, during one of my numerous stays in Canada… As usual I spent my time within the same white walls of the studio. I attempted to embody these strange perceptual experiences. The sculpting and sculpture positions were the same as usual. But unlike my work in the past, I chose medical casts rather than latex as my material. This time, my wife and I would be entering the membrane of the casts. I would make casts of both of our bodies. Limited to 20m2 of my studio, I began to litter the floor with bits and pieces ripped from our body casts. Arms, legs, buttocks, breasts, and heads seemed to be floating in the pool that was my studio. I bonded the skin of the casts perpendicularly to the surface of the
walls, and then considered making holes in the bonded sections.
The walls of the studio would be altered into the surface of the water, and the corporeity would be segmentalized. A number of amorphous puddles would appear on the vertical surface of the water. Putting one’s face near the surface and peering into the puddles would reveal extremely deep holes. These holes would be bent and twisted leading to inevitable undulations continuing deep down the holes. By peering into these long, protruding holes, similar to birth canals that could burrow there way into your head, you could see the world outside. Through these birth canal casts, the skin of the corporeity of my wife and I, the subjects relate to the world. My eyes could peer at the world through the holes in my corporeity. The sculpture is not to be seen from the viewpoint of the world outside.
In effect punching these holes in the walls of my studio would have been an unforgivable act.
Instead, I made a gate in an MDF board large enough for a person to pass through (height - 240cm, frontage - 200cm、depth - 120cm) and painted the board white, just like the casts. In the gate, I grafted the cast images of skin to the walls and ceiling to create a window and called the work “Passage 2002”.
Time Layer -Amniotic Fluid-
Through the birth of my two children, I have been able to experience concretely that the inner side of corporeity also has an existence of its own and that the world is no longer only in the outside of my corporeity. My experience at the sculpture center in Canada making casts of corporeity using medical casting materials helped me to discover some clues that embody the inner side of the world as the sculpture. I then began to search in the direction of the inner side of the corporeity from now on, with regard for the consecutive relationships that exist among corporeity, sculpture and the world.
Could it be, perhaps, that corporeity is recorded in the mind through the image of a woman giving birth to a child? Women do possess wombs, the matrices of the corporeity of the fetus. Those matrices extend from child to mother, from mother to grandmother, from grandmother to great grandmothers. This is similar to the Matryoshika dolls of Russia. What we do take notice of is that, in any case and without exception, the repeated castings that have occurred in the matrices, these wombs of the primitive human beings extending all the way back to Eve and her first conception, remain both uncountable and invisible.
I have set for myself two objectives for this work. One is “matrix of corporeity = womb”, through the lamination of layers, an embodiment of space-time fighting against upstream currents. I could no longer begin the sculpting of my own apparel and skin. The reason is that since I am a man, I have no womb, not matrix corporeity. Ergo, this time I must begin with the corporeity of my wife. My other objective is related to the position of the sculpture. Sculpture is not an object as much as a medium, similar to an amniotic membrane that stands between the subjects and the world. I wanted to create a transparent amniotic membrane that would melt into the space. That would embody the layers of the work’s “matrix of corporeity = womb”. However, while not always transparent, those viewing the work are able to shift back and forth from transparency to opacity as it moves through space. Through these shifts, the viewers should be able to sense an apparent relationship of mdsutual interdependence between the subjects and the world. This is the kind of material that is necessary. Such a material could render the borderlines nearly invisible, and the sculpture, as an amniotic membrane, could hide within the woven texture of the space. This would not be a closed object. Rather it would be a sculpture in which, as the viewers shift through space, they could switch between appearance and extinction. But it is not possible for apparel and latex and casts to achieve these kinds of visual effects.
Through lengthy trial and error attempts, I decided to use cardboard as the most appropriate material. With regard to the wave-like ribbing of cross-sections of cardboard, this material tends to appear transparent. Depending upon the direction of the view, the space within
the ribs opens and closes. This, in turn, should function as a switch between transparence and opacity from the viewer’s perspective. The problem was how to embody the layers of the womb using cardboard. The sculpting position that I imposed began with the corporeity of my wife. It was beside the question to make the configuration from cardboard at my own discretion. I had to consider a method of molding my wife’s corporeity out of cardboard.
First, I made a prototype by casting the entire naked body in a standing position. Then I sliced cross-sections through the cast vertically at 5 mm intervals. Next I created a cross-section diagram of approximately 700 sheets by tracing each cross-section on cardboard. At this time, I drew similar figures of concentric growth rings of 15 mm each on the inner sides of each cross-section diagram, and following the lines, I cut them out of cardboard. At every step as I attached the cardboard cutouts, I laminated them in a way that would maintain the form of the prototype. Then from the entire body model I embedded a number of similar figures like Matryoshika dolls creating a complete body image. When I was finished I discovered that both the outer and inner side of the sculpture could be seen at the same time. The laminated cardboard surfaces created a mesh that brought about a lustrous moiré-like finish. This ephemeral work was unlike any of my previous sculptures.
The spring of 2008. The exhibition space inside the Shibukawa City Museum is now similar to an indoor swimming pool. The 3 m. walls are white; the glass in the windows on the south and the door on north of the room are opaque. The ceiling is made of plasterboard and the floor is covered with linoleum. I suspended a dozen sculptures in a way that made them appear to be floating in the water of the space that was to serve as the indoor pool. The mother and fetus of each work were made from a single original. The inner sides of the works with their mesh-like cardboard symbols soon became soaked with water. Backed by the windows on the south, the mesh permeation membranes on the surface of the works seemed to bleed as they breathed, and they appeared to be swaying. The pool evolved into a rectangular womb.
When viewers enter the exhibition space, they would be immersed in amniotic fluid within a womb. The embedded works would appear as single entities. What the viewers would confront would not be a view of the work from outside but rather a position of being seen that would leave them feeling totally immersed in a room full of amniotic fluid. This way they would be drawn into the plexus of the work directly before their eyes. And the molds of embedded fetuses made from the corporeal matrices of the womb would give the appearance of a single fetus.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have dealt with 5 of my works in terms of 1) my sculpting position, 2) the basis of the sculpture position, and 3) detailed examples from the sculpting processes of these works. With regard to each of these frames of mind, my objectives, in brief, can be stated as follows: “Through layers of molds of corporeity made from old clothes, latex, casts, and cardboard, I have tried to create sculptures that establish relationships between the inner and outer sides, corporeity and space, subjects and the world, as the viewer enters within each work.” However subjects and the world are not easily connected. For this reason, the sculpture becomes an expression of “medium = starch”. As I wrote of my works above, I often used the term “hinge”, my own conception of what binds the subjects and the world. And through the hinges of these relations between subjects, sculptures and the world, I was able to achieve embedding through position reflection, inversion, repitition, turning things upside-down and inside-out. Through these sculptures, I have attempted to embody relationships of mutual interdependence with regard to the ambiguity of the subjects and the world.