Between Paintings and Projects
Yuko Shiraishi
I have always had an interest in the concept of ‘in–betweenness’.
What exists before one is born and after one dies?
What is the missing link between humans and primates?
What happens when vapour turns into rain?
I once watched a programme about the English mathematician Andrew John Wiles who provided a proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem, a longstanding mathematical puzzle. The strongest impression I received from watching the programme was that Wiles did not use a computer. He cited the reason as being that a computer can only tell you A or B, but what he was searching for was an answer that lay in between. This is something that I could relate to.
When thinking about what to say about Between Paintings and Projects, I find it hard to summarize my thoughts concisely. The problem with ‘in–betweenness’ is that it is a very abstract concept and, like magic, difficult to explain. So I have decided to simply write down what comes to mind.
First of all let me say something about my relationship with art.
From the age of five I knew I wanted to be a painter. I thought in terms of a painter because at that age I wasn’t yet familiar with the concept of an artist. I do not think my desire to become a painter was due to the influence of my environment but more because of some innate instinct within me.
I have continued to paint throughout my life. To think of paintings as being two–dimensional is simplistic. A world of many dimensions can be created on a flat canvas. The wall paintings found in the Chauvet Cave show that early humans started painting as long as 32,000 years ago. In fact, it is believed that drawing dates back to the time of the Neanderthals. People who say that painting is dead simply do not understand its universality and deep–rootedness.
Painting has been a source of pleasure to me from a young age. I also enjoy making things. Everything about the visual arts captivates me.
Films, books and music require time to appreciate. In the visual arts, however, time is not an issue. Understanding arises the very moment you look at a work of art. The eyes instantaneously capture the image and turn it into a permanent memory. This is how paintings are drawn and photographs are taken.
Whether it is Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers or an installation by Felix Gonzales Torres, the amount of time spent contemplating a work of art is up to the individual observer. Registration within the brain, however, is instantaneous and the image is transferred from the eye to the brain at lightning speed.
Let me now say something about my use of both visual and aural art.
In 1995 I was invited by Rear Window to take part in a project called Pretext Heteronyms. The location was a crumbling building on the south side of London Bridge. I took the opportunity to use sound in my artwork for the first time.
The title of my installation, Notes from the Underground, was taken from Fyodor Dostoyevskys’ novel. A hollowed out copy of the book was placed on a desk in the basement of the building. When the book was opened, visitors would find themselves staring into a dark void. Wind would rise up from the void and the sound of footsteps and the rumbling of an underground train would echo from it. This was my first ever installation.
From 2010 I began to incorporate sound and music increasingly into my artworks. It was in this year that I collaborated with Kawamura Tadao to create the band 36 (saburoku). Music has now become one of my concerns.
Visual art and aural art are different. A discussion about our aural senses between Yõrõ Takeshi and Yoshida Naoyo entitled From the Ear to the Brain was extremely thought provoking, so let me quote a passage from it.
When organisms first stepped onto land, the cochlea, an organ within the ear, developed to enable them to detect vibrations in the air. In other words, hearing is a more primordial sense than seeing. I therefore believe that logic is rooted in our aural senses. Logic proceeds sequentially through time and is thus a function of hearing and movement, not the eye. There is no logic involved in seeing.
My idea of an installation is something that can comprise elements of literature, science, music, architecture and more. This is a reflection of our age and the constant access we have to a plethora of multicultural and multimedia influences.
The greatest scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century were the discovery of DNA and the development of the computer. Step forward into the twenty–first century and the spread of ever more sophisticated technology continues to accelerate. We have reached a point where the excess of information available to us has made us credulous and uncritical. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, people and nations become, contrary to what might be expected, more and more inward–looking. Economic advancement is following a similarly disturbing pattern. Changes occur so rapidly that countries and governments are no longer in control. The world in which we find ourselves controls us and yet leaves us defenseless. The computers and mobile phones with which we surround ourselves do not take us forward but cause us to retreat into the womb. We live in a world of science fiction.
I think the robot age will come next.
Scenes like those in the Sci–Fi film Terminator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the manga Pluto by Tezuka Osamu and Urasawa Naoki could soon become a reality. The book Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick written in 1968, on which Ridley Scott based his film Blade Runner, seems uncannily prescient. To think that robots might be the objects of human love and hatred makes me feel uneasy.
To create art you cannot turn away from reality.
In fact you must not.
Individuals portray reality in many different ways. Although reality is often daunting, you need to be courageous and face up to it. This is not so much a matter for society but for the individual. Through doing so you show that you are living.
Do my paintings and installations work in parallel? Or do they overlap or counteract one another? I can’t answer these questions simply. However, what I seek to do is take these two sometimes opposing and sometimes mutually enhancing forms of expression in order to create an organic world that evolves like bacteria, transforming themselves as they bind with and separate from each other. I want to swim, walk, sleep, eat, and silently explore the ‘in–betweenness’ that lies between A and B.