Seitaro Yamazaki Newsletter August 29, 2024
In the last issue, I introduced the specific steps of how I created the series “Specimens of the spilled over”.
Today, I would like to talk a little about why I started creating this series.
I don’t know when I first became fully aware of this, but I have become unusually attracted to the space between things, or the indistinct boundary between two things. I have been pursuing this in my contemporary art works, and have been asked over and over again why I am so obsessed with ambiguity.
Each time, I have explained that it is because of the traditional beauty of Japan, but recently I think I have finally found an explanation that fits better.
This is also related to my work as a designer.
As a designer, I make a variety of things, and my design work is based on organizing information for the benefit of my clients and the users who come after them. Part of that organizing process involves deciding what to do with sensitive information. Discriminatory expressions must be absolutely avoided.
And there are various theories and rules on how to avoid discriminatory expressions.
This is a great thing but on the other hand, I have always wondered if we are using these theories as a way to think that we understand the problem and if this just a way for society to put a lid on these issues.
“Specimens of the spilled over” portrays this social phenomenon.
The ambiguous things around the various words said are enlarged, painted with bright fluorescent colors, fixed with insect pins, made into a specimen, and distributed to society. This is just a pretense of understanding, a symbolization of ambiguity, a dragging out and consuming of ambiguity. Such is the message of this project.
Amidst the recent rise of voices such as the SDGs and diversity, I sometimes feel that superficial consideration for the pretense of “diversity” and “minorities” may be hindering deeper understanding.
This seems to typify the concepts of “minority” and “diversity,” as if we were naming a new species of insect, pinning it up, and storing it in a specimen box.
By inventing new words that point to issues previously overlooked in ambiguity, and by exhibiting specimens that correspond to these words, we may be missing the tactile sensations, smells, tastes, or even sounds emitted by things that are hidden within the boundaries of words and ideas.
This is an aspect of modern society that we all are involved, including myself. It is a reminder to myself not to forget.
I am showing several new works from this series, including large-scaled versions in my solo exhibition at Aoyama Spiral Garden.
Admission is free, so please come and see them.
I will participate in group exhibitions in Warsaw, Poland and Gimpo, Korea.
The exhibition is called “Warsaw Gallery Weekend” which will be held on the last weekend in September.
The exhibition theme is “What to Fill Empty Monuments With?” and I’ll be exhibiting two works from the series “The Voice within the Voice”. You can view these works at my solo exhibition at Spiral Garden.
The Voice within the Voice “Sandra Oh speaks at anti-Asian hate rally in Oakland”, “What Fukushima’s Nuclear Exclusion Zone is Like Today”
Media: Archival Inkjet on Photopaper
Year: 2024
The other group exhibition titled “Art is” to be held at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Gimpo, Korea from February to March next year. I will join the second half of the exhibition (March 12-30) with “8 Million Traces”. This piece can also be viewed at Spiral Garden.
8 million traces
Media: Archival Inkjet on Photopaper, Archival Inkjet on Japanese Paper, Textile
Year: 2023-2024
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