WHAT
IS THE HEATGRAPH ?
One day I
had a little idea for making an etching, and tried a felt
cloth instead of a paper. A felt sheet is certainly similar
to paper, but it has more a sense of presence as matter, and
a strange skin sensation, as well. Through scorching felt
by fire, as if biting a plate, cutting the sheet by a burner,
or making a pile of sheets, I found materiality as an object
in a felt sheet for printmaking, more so than in the case
of printed paper.
In this way,
I got the freedom to create object-style prints enriched with
a two-dimensional spacious plane and a three-dimensional space:
I have been released from the restraints of traditional techniques
or expressions of copper print. This has enabled me to develop
the new-style print as an installation at galleries or museums
-- felt works presenting me ideas of new image.
In the sense
that the technique can create an image with a feeling of a
primitive engraving, that is , burning a felt sheet, I named
the working method as " Heatgraph. " A series work
of necktie-shaped felt pieces, called " MEMORY, "
tries to express man's humorous aspect and the time-passage
of its collapse, rather than an irony of controlled human
society. I think that man engraves memories in his or her
mind most especially when materials or images of things collapse.
Watching
the sight of the quick collapse of the large skyscraper (Twin
Towers, New York) in TV on September 11, I would question
myself about " what is civilization? " This makes
me feel that the time and space in which I live are even denied,
being so more than the time when those buildings really existed
-- the sight was engraved as a heavy Memory in the depth of
my mind.
I soon began
to think that I would like to create a work of " minus-scenery
" where the collapse of things -- not the formation of
things -- are depicted, like a sight where a copper plate
is collapsed (bitten) by a nitric acid.
For the recent
series called " WATER MARK " I have made pieces
simply by burning felt sheets and making holes there to leave
marks of burning. Viewers must get completely free different
images, according to their memories or imaginations, from
the sight of the accidentally made negative mark of burning.
Just as water accepts various metamorphosis and forms natural
sceneries, the burned mark as an art media will express lost
memories in the depth of our mind. |
