JOURNAL

Seitaro Yamazaki Newsletter August 16, 2024

Hey it’s me, Seitaro.

My solo exhibition, Art that Crosses Borders, Design that Traverses will begin this Saturday, August 17 until September 1 at Spiral Garden in Aoyama, Tokyo.

This exhibition showcases not only of contemporary art works, but also of a comprehensive range of works as a designer and performer.

Ever since I found that this project was happening, I have been thinking about what kind of content to present, consulting with Spiral Garden’s team and getting their feedback. It all came to be during my first meeting with Spiral team’s Hiroyuki Kobayashi.

Hiroyuki said, “Business, performance, and design. Everything you do is art, isn’t it?

This was the origin.

It was also Hiroyuki who gave me the idea of “Why don’t you put words on all the artworks?

I was completely bowled over by this idea.

As someone who usually works in the world of visual communication, it was a refreshing experience for me to have the opportunity to verbalize all of my works. I am very much looking forward to seeing how my words will reflect to the visitors.

Growing up, I was obsessed with performance arts. In college, I got into photography, dance, VJ, and graphic design. After graduating, I dived deeper into design and management, as well as ink painting and ikebana flower arrangement, and went back to graduate school for architecture…. And now, as you see, I make contemporary art works.

I have been told for a long time that I have “dabbled in too many things” but I think that is just the nature of who I am. Whenever my activities seem to settle down, it makes me want to try new things, making my creations unstable. It would be like shaking a bottle of vintage wine that is just about ready to drink and letting the lees dance around. Maybe my creations will never mature.

I believe that this constant movement toward new things, while deliberately letting the lees dance around inside me, has shaped who I am. And now we live in an era in which art forms are expanding rapidly. There are artist collectives such as ruangrupa that have made business one of their areas of activity so I think that my various business activities can also be seen as a part of art. This solo exhibition was put together with this in mind.

I hope you will enjoy my many creative activities at this exhibition.

There are new artworks to be showcased as well. Since it’s a large venue, I have prepared some large works that I have not had a chance to create before.

On the 23rd, we are planning an event with Mr. Uchida and Mr. Hashimoto from JR West, a special sponsor of the exhibition. Also, with Mr. Akira Kobayashi from MONOTYPE to introduce the story behind the development of “WESTERX SANS,” an original font developed by JR West this time.

Hope to see you there!