Kishio Suga
Periphery 2, 1988
wood and paint
10.9 × 41.1 × 25.7cm
As one of the leading members of the Mono-ha movement, Kishio Suga's artistic practice mainly focuses on exploring the relationships between objects (Mono) and space, as well as potential association...
As one of the leading members of the Mono-ha movement, Kishio Suga's artistic practice mainly focuses on exploring the relationships between objects (Mono) and space, as well as potential association that arise from combining the two.
Mono-ha was born in the late 60s and early 70s, in a tumultuous socio-political post-war climate that spawned many artists' movements in Japan and internationally, such as Arte Povera in Italy and Land Art in United States. Similar to the mainstream avant-garde art movements of the time, they discussed how to transcend Western Modernism.
Reeling from the horrors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mono-ha artists like Kishio Suga, Nobuo Sekine, Susumu Koshimizu, and Lee Ufan naturally rejected man-made forms, feeling that they led inevitably towards conflict and destruction. They shared a goal to accentuate what is intrinsically beautiful and artistic in raw materials by bringing together natural and industrial objects in their unaltered state, allowing dynamic combinations of materials to speak for themselves.
Suga explored into the notion of "surroundings" (shui) as an expansion of space in the 1980s. He attempted to demonstrate it visually by presenting divided space, with walls of connected objects. Executed in 1990 with Suga's mature techniques, Protrusion Series "Gaps in Surroundings" marks an important moment in his artistic oeuvre. The work adopts a rectangular shape that deliberately mimics a pictorial plane, with various painted panels that serve as devices for setting up an active environment, in which the viewer then becomes part of the organic artistic process. There is no focal point in Suga's work, as the viewer is welcome to imagine through the installation with a liberated spirit.
Suga firmly believes that people and things exist in a relationship of mutual dependence (izon). His work creates another environment where active minds and the physicality of the reality come into a unity. Furthermore, when the reality of things and human perception find a fine equilibrium, it is when the essence of this shared "situation" between the two is revealed.
Protrusion Series "Gaps in Surroundings" (1990) is a masterpiece that seamlessly illustrates Suga's passionate pursuit of the perception of things. Standing in front of the work, one is not only looking, but also invited to gaze through it, transforming the surrounding space through his/her own imagination and arrangements, and often associating it with landscapes commonly developed in Suga's oeuvre.
Such practice embodies an antithesis of late capitalism in the postmodern world, calling for enlightenment of the artistic subject and the fluidity of the phenomenological world (Tetsuya Kamimura, Tomio Koyama, Mikio Okado, and Tsuyoshi Satoh, "Kishio Suga and Mono-ha – In Place of an Introduction," in Kishio Suga "Intentional Scenic Space," Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, 2017, p. 93). Therefore, Suga works beyond the identity of an artist – he is made a poet and a philosopher, in the moment of the viewer's self-realization of the essence of existentialism.
作為物派運動的重要推手，菅木志雄的藝術主要致力於探索物件與空間的關係，以及兩者結合所產生的潛在連結。六〇年代末和七〇年代初物派興起，當時世界正處於社會政治動蕩不安的戰後時代。這個時期不僅在日本甚至在國際上， 例如意大利和美國都在戰後時期掀起「貧窮藝術」、「大地藝術」等各種藝術浪潮。和其他主流的前衛藝術運動一樣，如何超越西方現代藝術是共同討論的議題。
在廣島和長崎原子彈轟炸事件後，如菅木志雄、關根伸夫、小清水漸、和李禹煥等藝術家自然的刻畫了他們對戰爭麻木、恐懼的心態，拒絕任何人為形式，深怕自己的行為將造成不可避免的衝突和毀滅。他們共享一致的目標是探究物質或原物料中所帶有的美學本質，藉由來自天然的物質和工業用的原物料來進行創作，耳目一新的組合開啟了物質之間的對話。
菅木志雄對於「周遭環境」概念的探索始於一九八〇年代，他將物件連接起來形成一堵堵牆，以視覺化的手法將空間隔開，旨在拓展空間意義。到了一九九〇年技法已達爐火純青的境地，因而創造出藝術生涯中的大作《Protrusion系列—周圍的空隙》。這件作品刻意模仿平面繪畫的矩形格式，經由多重彩繪面板建構出充滿活力的環境，使觀者成為有機藝術過程的一部分。菅木志雄的作品向來沒有特定焦點，歡迎觀眾透過其裝置作品解放想像力。
菅木志雄堅信人與物之間是一種相互依存的關係，因此創造出別樣的環境，讓活躍的思維和物理的現實在其中合而為一。此外，當萬物現實和人類感知達到良好平衡時，兩者之間這種共同「處境」的本質便展露無遺。
《Protrusion系列—周圍的空隙》（1990）是一件上承之作，自然流露出菅木志雄對萬物感知的熱情追求。面對作品之時，不僅可以欣賞它，作者更邀請觀者逼視甚至以目光穿透它，通過自己的想像力和安排翻轉周圍空間，同時腦海出現他其他作品中常見的風景。這種實踐體現了後現代世界後期資本主義的對立面，所訴求的是藝術主題的啟發性和世界現象的流動性（Tetsuya Kamimura、小山登美夫、大門未希生和佐藤强志，「菅木志雄和物派──不止於簡介」，出自 〈菅木志雄 - 有意的風景空間〉，小山登美夫畫廊，東京，2017年，第93頁）。於此，菅木志雄早已超越藝術家的單一身份，在觀眾自發性地意識到存在主義本質的剎那間，他更是一位詩人和哲學家。
Mono-ha was born in the late 60s and early 70s, in a tumultuous socio-political post-war climate that spawned many artists' movements in Japan and internationally, such as Arte Povera in Italy and Land Art in United States. Similar to the mainstream avant-garde art movements of the time, they discussed how to transcend Western Modernism.
Reeling from the horrors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mono-ha artists like Kishio Suga, Nobuo Sekine, Susumu Koshimizu, and Lee Ufan naturally rejected man-made forms, feeling that they led inevitably towards conflict and destruction. They shared a goal to accentuate what is intrinsically beautiful and artistic in raw materials by bringing together natural and industrial objects in their unaltered state, allowing dynamic combinations of materials to speak for themselves.
Suga explored into the notion of "surroundings" (shui) as an expansion of space in the 1980s. He attempted to demonstrate it visually by presenting divided space, with walls of connected objects. Executed in 1990 with Suga's mature techniques, Protrusion Series "Gaps in Surroundings" marks an important moment in his artistic oeuvre. The work adopts a rectangular shape that deliberately mimics a pictorial plane, with various painted panels that serve as devices for setting up an active environment, in which the viewer then becomes part of the organic artistic process. There is no focal point in Suga's work, as the viewer is welcome to imagine through the installation with a liberated spirit.
Suga firmly believes that people and things exist in a relationship of mutual dependence (izon). His work creates another environment where active minds and the physicality of the reality come into a unity. Furthermore, when the reality of things and human perception find a fine equilibrium, it is when the essence of this shared "situation" between the two is revealed.
Protrusion Series "Gaps in Surroundings" (1990) is a masterpiece that seamlessly illustrates Suga's passionate pursuit of the perception of things. Standing in front of the work, one is not only looking, but also invited to gaze through it, transforming the surrounding space through his/her own imagination and arrangements, and often associating it with landscapes commonly developed in Suga's oeuvre.
Such practice embodies an antithesis of late capitalism in the postmodern world, calling for enlightenment of the artistic subject and the fluidity of the phenomenological world (Tetsuya Kamimura, Tomio Koyama, Mikio Okado, and Tsuyoshi Satoh, "Kishio Suga and Mono-ha – In Place of an Introduction," in Kishio Suga "Intentional Scenic Space," Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, 2017, p. 93). Therefore, Suga works beyond the identity of an artist – he is made a poet and a philosopher, in the moment of the viewer's self-realization of the essence of existentialism.
作為物派運動的重要推手，菅木志雄的藝術主要致力於探索物件與空間的關係，以及兩者結合所產生的潛在連結。六〇年代末和七〇年代初物派興起，當時世界正處於社會政治動蕩不安的戰後時代。這個時期不僅在日本甚至在國際上， 例如意大利和美國都在戰後時期掀起「貧窮藝術」、「大地藝術」等各種藝術浪潮。和其他主流的前衛藝術運動一樣，如何超越西方現代藝術是共同討論的議題。
在廣島和長崎原子彈轟炸事件後，如菅木志雄、關根伸夫、小清水漸、和李禹煥等藝術家自然的刻畫了他們對戰爭麻木、恐懼的心態，拒絕任何人為形式，深怕自己的行為將造成不可避免的衝突和毀滅。他們共享一致的目標是探究物質或原物料中所帶有的美學本質，藉由來自天然的物質和工業用的原物料來進行創作，耳目一新的組合開啟了物質之間的對話。
菅木志雄對於「周遭環境」概念的探索始於一九八〇年代，他將物件連接起來形成一堵堵牆，以視覺化的手法將空間隔開，旨在拓展空間意義。到了一九九〇年技法已達爐火純青的境地，因而創造出藝術生涯中的大作《Protrusion系列—周圍的空隙》。這件作品刻意模仿平面繪畫的矩形格式，經由多重彩繪面板建構出充滿活力的環境，使觀者成為有機藝術過程的一部分。菅木志雄的作品向來沒有特定焦點，歡迎觀眾透過其裝置作品解放想像力。
菅木志雄堅信人與物之間是一種相互依存的關係，因此創造出別樣的環境，讓活躍的思維和物理的現實在其中合而為一。此外，當萬物現實和人類感知達到良好平衡時，兩者之間這種共同「處境」的本質便展露無遺。
《Protrusion系列—周圍的空隙》（1990）是一件上承之作，自然流露出菅木志雄對萬物感知的熱情追求。面對作品之時，不僅可以欣賞它，作者更邀請觀者逼視甚至以目光穿透它，通過自己的想像力和安排翻轉周圍空間，同時腦海出現他其他作品中常見的風景。這種實踐體現了後現代世界後期資本主義的對立面，所訴求的是藝術主題的啟發性和世界現象的流動性（Tetsuya Kamimura、小山登美夫、大門未希生和佐藤强志，「菅木志雄和物派──不止於簡介」，出自 〈菅木志雄 - 有意的風景空間〉，小山登美夫畫廊，東京，2017年，第93頁）。於此，菅木志雄早已超越藝術家的單一身份，在觀眾自發性地意識到存在主義本質的剎那間，他更是一位詩人和哲學家。
Exhibitions
2022-SPACIOUS, A Sculpture Exhibition4
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