|
-
TANA Gallery Bookshelf is pleased to present “Space | Form | Painting,” a solo exhibition of Japanese painter Ryuhei Fujita. Currently based in Kyoto, Fujita explores possibilities of what can be called “painting,” which includes a range of practices such as marking numerous simple patterns onto walls and street surfaces, drawing lines with clay across the base layer of spatial enclosure, and letting ribbons and windsocks flutter in the wind up in the air. Carefully interlacing as simple lines and actions as can be followed by ordinary people, Fujita attempts to let go his image away from his own body, skill and thought, thereby gradually transporting it to the place of his practice and weaving up a sort of painterly space. With the presence of an artist as the author disappearing little by little, the image coming into being and the place drawn out by the very act of making get closer to each other, which converges into the “figure and ground” relationship where both aspects can invert at any moment. In this inseparable reciprocity between an artwork and the place to experience it, Fujita keeps exploring a kind of painting that can exist as an image and its frame simultaneously.
This exhibition Space | Form | Painting uses the small exhibition space inside a bookshelf as a frame for Fujita’s work “Exploration of a Protoplasm,” a single strip of 35mm photographic negative film on which numerous crisscross patterns are scratched out. Across the entire surface of the film strip, each simple crisscross mark is influenced by previously drawn ones while also influencing ones to be drawn from there, respectively suspended in the time of execution unstably between its preceding and following moments, which in turn assembles into an organic continuum. Fujita has already produced works in the same vein that draw upon repetition and difference of hand-marked patterns in order to situate direct correspondence between image and where it takes place, but this exhibition takes a different approach by using the smooth and apparently endless surface of rolled 35mm film as metaphorically alluding to an abstract space so that the artist can focus on interactions of image alone while withholding conditions found in any concrete place.
Conceived by Czech physiologist J. E. Purkinje in 1839, the now scientifically declined notion of “protoplasm” was the then smallest structure in an organism that was made visible through microscopic lens and endowed with a mythical agency as that which makes a living being what it is. Metaphorically taking up this primary being that the late 19th century scientist envisioned through the then latest visualization device, Fujita also looks into how lines emerge as the smallest constituents of his work, how patterns guide those lines, and how their repetition and difference enlace transformations, thereby setting out to explore the constitutive principle of image that articulates forms and meanings in otherwise-ambiguous extension of planes and spaces, toward what can be found as a sort of “protoplasm” of painting.
Earlier on, Fujita held two solo exhibitions that in different experimental settings attempt at re-working on the notion of painting as a set of conditions (or an act of conditioning) to make up a frame of experiencing image. The first one E ga Nai Kabe. / Iro no Nai Katachi. / Nokora-nai Sen. / Kaiga no Jouken. [lit. Walls without painting. / Forms without Color. / Lines without Trace. / Conditions of Painting.] (KOMAGOME 1-14cas, 2017) experimented how a sort of painterly experience can emerge out of a nearly vacant space that lacks formal protocols and contents of so-called painting, while the second one Kaiga no Jouken - Dousei [lit. Conditions of Painting - Cohabitation] (KOMAGOME 1-14cas, 2018) in the following year was situated in an painting workshop for kids led by another person (not a collaborator) to examine how blank space for embracing multiple generative processes for image creation could be maintained in the place already saturated with images. One month after the latter exhibition, Fujita held a duo exhibition Fūkei wo Se ni Shite [lit. Landscape in the Background] (Umi no Atelier, 2018) at his atelier facing a cove in Kamoi in Yokosuka city with photographer Yusuke Nasu. Subtitled as an “Exhibition of Small Pieces” and also notified so in its handout, the exhibition at the place of his daily life and production focused explicitly on the detached mode of artwork as a “small piece” to probe into the interaction between individuated works of art with certain autonomy and the environment to exhibit them in, especially through juxtaposition of a tableau work that encapsulated the time and space in the cove and the real space-time extension of the painted motif in its background. Considered against a series of his experimentations that scrutinize relations between image and its place to be, “Exploration of a Protoplasm” is positioned as an attempt to go back to the generative order and principle of image within the phase of its spontaneous formation, and the exhibition Space | Form | Painting puts the work into another trial to scrutiny how the “installation” of a once finished piece with certain autonomy can define a new set of conditions for painterly experience through the post-production process that affects the existing conditions of a given place.
Fujita’s exploration into the essential in the innermost working of things and events reminds us of the notion of Eidos, an Aristotelian concept that refers to the essence inseparably embedded in individual concrete objects as articulating hyle, otherwise amorphous matter, into certain forms and meanings. Should there be any Eidos or protoplasm of painting, it would not only form matters as tangible hyle into a work of painting but also articulate space as intangible hyle into painting as experience, both in accord with the same generative principle at work in the twofold process happening to an object and its environment. Please join us to witness Fujita’s new experiment to identify the moment of such endless inversion.
|
|
-
京都を拠点として活動する日本人画家の藤田龍平は、単純な文様を壁や路上へと無数に書き連ねる、粘土による線を空間の基層に張り巡らす、あるいは吹き流しを空に泳がせるといった行為を、あくまで「絵画」として制作しています。ひとつひとつの要素としては誰にでも模倣できる線やふるまいを慎重に重ねていくことで、藤田はイメージを自らの身体や技巧や思考から引きはがし、それを少しづつ場に移し替えながら絵画的な空間を織り上げていきます。作者の存在が次第に消滅していくにつれ、描かれるイメージと描き出される場所は互いに漸近し、表裏一体の「図と地」の関係へと収斂していきます。作品とそれを体験する場の分かちがたいこの往還関係において、藤田はイメージであり同時にその枠組み（フレーム）となるような絵画の探究を続けています。
本展「空間｜形相｜絵画」は、写真用35ｍｍネガフィルムロールの表面に無数に十字状の文様を掻き連ねた小作品《原形質の探究》を本棚一段の小さな空間に展示するものです。フィルム表面を覆う単純な線の交差のひとつひとつは、それまでに描かれたものに影響されつつ、そこから描かれるものへも影響することで、宙づりにされた時間の中でそれぞれに揺らぎながら、その集合を有機的な連続体へと紡ぎ上げています。これまでも藤田は文様の反復と差異を頼りにイメージと場の直接的な応答から生まれる作品を制作してきましたが、本作品では藤田は延々と平坦に続くかのようなフィルムロールを抽象的な空間と見立てることで、場の条件を保留してイメージの内部作用そのものに向き合っています。
顕微鏡の登場を背景として細胞の発見者の一人となったチェコの生理学者ヤン・E・プルキンエが1839年に提唱した「原形質」は、当時の科学が目に捉えることのできた生命体の最小構造として、生物を生物たらしめるものとしての神秘的な意味を与えられました。１９世紀前半の科学者が顕微鏡の向こう側の景色に想い描いたこの原初の存在をメタファーとして、藤田は自らの制作の最小単位である線の現れと、その描線を導く文様と、その反復と差異が紡ぐ変容に、さもなければただ漠然と広がっていたはずの平面や空間にかたちと意味を与える絵画の生成原理を探究します。
本展に先立ち、藤田は絵画をイメージの体験の枠組みを整える条件（化）と捉えて、ふたつの個展を行っています。ひとつめの「絵がない壁。色のない形。残らない線。絵画の条件。」（KOMAGOME 1-14cas, 2017）では、絵画の形式と内容がともに不在なままで白紙的な空間にいかにして絵画の体験が立ち上がりうるかが、そして翌年の「絵画の条件 - 同棲」（KOMAGOME 1-14cas, 2018）では、すでにイメージに溢れた絵画教室という環境の中でイメージの生成過程が複数共存するための余白がいかにして保持されうるかが、それぞれ異なる組み立ての実験によって模索されました。そして、「絵画の条件 - 同棲」の翌月に当時の生活と制作の場であった横須賀市鴨居の入り江に面するアトリエで「小作品の展示」として開催された写真家・那須悠介との二人展「風景を背にして」（海のアトリエ, 2018）では、但し書きと展示名にも示されるように、個物として一定の自律性を有した小作品とそれが展示される場の相互作用を探るために、その入り江の時間と空間を収斂させたタブローと現実に広がる入り江が並置されました。こうしたイメージと場の関係を巡る藤田の一連の試みにおいて、《原形質の探究》は、場の条件に先立ち、イメージが自律的に生成する秩序と原理をその出現から遡及的に手探りするものであり、本展「空間｜形相｜絵画」は、ひとつの場を条件として、一定の自律性を有した作品の「設置」というイメージの場に対する事後的な作用が体験としての絵画の条件をいかに整えうるかを試すものといえます。
事物の内奥に本質を見いだそうとするこの試みは、さらに時代を遡行して、古代ギリシャの哲学者アリストテレスが個々の実体に不可分に結合するものとして提唱した、素材としての質料にかたちと意味を与える本質としての形相を想起させます。もし絵画の原形質となる形相があるとすれば、それは質料という触れられる実の素材を作品としての絵画に導くだけではなく、同じ形相の生成原理に基づいて、物質と空間の表裏一体の関係の中でまさに図と地が軽やかに反転するように、空間という触れることのできない虚の素材を体験としての絵画へと導くことも、自ずと考えられるのではないでしょうか。その終わりのない反転の瞬間を探究する藤田の新たな実験をどうぞご覧ください。
|
