|
In the early 1990's Jun Kaneko visited The Netherlands and the European Ceramics Work Centre where he developed a new, different and exciting body of work. A book was published commorating the event. The follow excerpt was written by Jun Kaneko in 1996.
Dutch Series - Between Light and Shadow
To make each decision during the creative activity of art making is such a mysterious act. It is impossible to even define each creative move or the decisions that take place in the art making process.
There are so many different roads to get where I want to go and there are countless roads where I do not want to go. But the places I wish to be and not to be change frequently. Therefore, my personal map ends up having a trail that looks like tangled-up string.
Walking through the fog is one of my favorite things visually. I see a shadow of some obscure gray object far off in the fog suggesting some kind of shape and that form gets sharper and sharper as I approach. The suggestion of the shape in my mind finally becomes a reality. I enjoy that short time, those moments between the realization that something is there to the time it becomes clearly visible. It is this point and this space I am interested in.
Observations and thoughts, written over a period of a few days in studio...
Now, the reality of creating and making of an object starts. Keep on breathing trying to find the center of yourself. Mind works and hand moves. It is the beginning...
The bottom line of being a visual artist is to be alive and to make something visual.
All other issues of ideas and values that might come out of this art-making process are relatively unstable.
Wind blows
Rain falls
Finally the sun comes out...
How do we know when it is time to stop working on a piece? Five minutes from now or a few months..,
It is the mystery of our feeling.
I don't know when the ending of each work comes. The minute I thought I got it, it disappears often. My mind gets washed away, floating between light and shadow, trying to find the next thing to hold onto.
Keep on working...
I do not know how to get the new work started. I depend on my intuitive spark to help me start. Working gives me a chance to think. Doing makes me think, makes me do more. I believe that if I follow my intuition to make an object, sooner or later, maybe thirty years later, I may have an idea of what I have been doing.
Having my own fixed philosophical point of view makes me wonder if I could keep my mind flexible and my attitude fresh. I see so many cases of people denying other ideas and values in order to keep one's own point of view.
Keep on working...
To me working with my heartbeat is everything. If I am lucky I will get something out of this...
We have to use some material to make a visual statement of the artist's concept. This is going to present a few problems.
The first one is creative energy...
Some people have high creative energy and some do not have so much. It is my basic interest and concern to maintain a high level of creative energy to make objects. I often think it may be about maintaining a level of curiosity about what I am doing that parallels to having a high level of creative energy. I do things that I am curious about. This creates new ideas and this brings more questions and more curiosity to the original idea. This is how creative energy expands rapidly.
The second problem is that of craftsmanship...
Anyone making an object has to deal with craftsmanship. We have all had the experience of using a new material to make a visual statement. At the beginning one seems to have a big distance between the material and themselves, which may be called craftsmanship. As we get familiar with the material over the years of working with it, we develop a better control of that material and we get closer and closer to shrink the distance between the material and ourselves. Finally, some people develop an amazing ability of working with a material. The mind and the hand work so free and good with the material, that it looks like there is no distance between the material and the maker anymore. This is when people might start to call themselves a master craftsman.
But as long as the concept of becoming a master craftsman is based on reducing this distance between the material and the maker, it will not work. There will always be a small distance between the two. Recently I have started to think if it is possible to become the material itself. Then this space between the maker and the material would not exist.
An old Japanese carpenter told me this story... 'A long time ago, when someone in the village wanted to build a new house for the family, they would go to the master carpenter to discuss their need for space and the design of the house. Then they would show the carpenter the family mountain where they intended to cut trees for the new house. After having a clear understanding of the man's needs, the carpenter walks around the mountain site, looking at each tree, trying to find the best one for each section of the house he was going to build.'
This attitude of the carpenter toward his material and the house he was going to build interests me a great deal. I think he was trying to talk to each tree, to find what was the best possible individual tree for the part of the house he was imagining. In this process of finding the right tree, the carpenter knows that for the north side of the building, he should use trees from the north side of the mountain. Trees growing in shade grow slower than ones growing in the sunlight. The same kind of trees growing on the north side of the mountain are much more dense than the ones growing on the south side of the mountain. The denser wood from the north side has much better weather resistance than the trees on the south side. Knowing that the north side of the wooden house usually starts showing structural problems from dampness, the carpenter chooses to build the north side of the house with wood from the north side of the hill. Furthermore, each individual tree has its own north, south, east or west face. When the carpenter places the initial poles for the house, he will be sure to put them in the way that they were growing, south to face south, north to north, so that the pole could react in a much more natural way than if he had disregarded the tree's original growth pattern. Also, when putting up vertical posts, the carpenter sets the right side of the tree up, identical to the way it was growing. If the pole were placed upside down, water could be drawn in by capillary action, much easier than when it is placed right side up. It is very important to understand the nature and the development of the material with which you are working.
This story makes me realize how the carpenter was able to become the material itself and understand nature. This is my hope that someday I will be able to develop such an ability and sensitivity to the material I will use for my art.
The third problem is scale...
This is another thing we cannot avoid when we make objects. If everything in the world was the same size we probably would not need an idea of scale. Nothing exists by itself. Everything is influenced by the other things next to it or close by or the environment which the object is in. A seventy-story building is a large man-made object, but if you place it next to a 3000 meter high mountain, you might see it as a small object.
At the same time, we often find a small stone on a beach or roadside that gives us the feeling that it is so large. When I feel a sense of large scale by looking at a small thing, I find myself pulled subconsciously into this small object and forgetting the conventional meaning of scale. I travel a pathway around the stone. I might feel sunshine and shadows of clouds cast on mountains. I might even feel crisp cool air or hear the sound of a stream running. But the moment I become conscious of this, I always get thrown out of this spiritual experience.
This spiritual scale is what I am most interested in.
When I look up toward a tall mountain or a tree, I sense some interesting similarities to spiritual feelings happening within myself. When I walk into most churches, their internal space almost forces me to look up to the high ceilings, to make me experience a spiritual emotion. The architects who have built the churches throughout the world must have known that when a person looks up some spiritual feeling grows inside. On the other hand, when I look down into a flower in a garden or at children, I experience a different emotion. I'm not certain if they are different because of what I am looking at or because I am looking down. But, I know for sure that I feel completely different when I'm looking down to a small person than when I'm looking up to a tall person. These two different feelings may be the foundation of the intuitive emotions people have about scale.
Oftentimes I am asked why I make such large-scale work. In making any object, we cannot escape the problems of scale. I believe each form has one right scale. Whether I'm making a large or small object, in the end I hope it will make sense to have that particular scale and form together and that it will give off enough visual energy to shake the air around it.
Days pass
My thoughts keep revolving...
Finally I give up thinking and just sit in front of my piece, trying to catch what the shape is saying to me. I walk around the studio and try to make conversation with the works I've made. When I hear what the form has to say, I start seeing marks and colors on the surface. To me, a pattern or a color repeated, makes some kind of visual order. Even if I desire to use a line, an endless combination of arrangements of lines is possible. The spaces between the marks contribute a great deal to the tonality of the finished work.
Having the ability to orchestrate the different marks and spaces in a given area becomes crucial, but the act of placement of these marks and the density of space is totally intuitive.
Finally, the value of art is one of the most difficult things to describe. Basically, there are no concrete values for the arts. Value is something we create from the influences of the time in which we live. Evaluation to the value changes constantly because we change and our surroundings change constantly.
Value is the concept of measuring the degree of importance...
The only way to know is to just keep working.
Try to listen to what my heart is telling me and to flow with everything around me.
Art making is so limited, so frustrating. But at the same time, so mysterious and so exciting. I hope I could flow with this exciting and mysterious feeling to the end of my life.
Jun Kaneko
The Netherlands, May 1996
|
