Page 124 - japanese and korean art Utterberg Collection Christie's March 22 2022

ink arts comes to mind, as does the “profound mysteriousness” of
continues, moving from perceptual to existential questions. “And
the aesthetics of yugen and the Noh theater, which Hasumura cites when I try to know what lies beyond that world, my body melts
as an influence. and disappears into the darkness of the river.”
But just as calligraphy and ink painting were revolutionized in the One thinks here of the explorations of the boundary between
1950s by nurturing commonalities with modernist abstraction, blindness and revelation within minimalist and post-minimalist
so Hasumura’s experiments with ink and washi might be better art, from Ad Reinhardt’s “black paintings” to James Turrell’s light
appreciated in dialogue with turn-of-the-century modernism’s installations, or (once again) Sugimoto’s theater photographs, and
interest in the graphic representation of movement. Though the feelings of perceptual and corporeal uncertainty such works
Hasumura’s materials are fixed, her forms are never static. Her can induce. Yet one should also keep in mind the importance of
ghostly forms and vibratory afterimages recall Étienne-Jules flowing water itself within East Asian aesthetics, as both a symbol
Marey’s chronophotographs of humans and animals in motion, of the perpetuity of change and a specific problem of representation
and Italian Futurism’s reinterpretation of such scientific imagery within the visual arts, which are ostensibly grounded in the
for more overtly aesthetic ends, as in Giacomo Balla’s famous rendering of fixed forms. This motif has asserted itself in various
painting, “Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash” (1912), and the ways within contemporary art, from experimental filmmaker Paul
dematerialized hands, limbs, and faces of Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s Sharits
“photodynamism.” As such, we might consider Hasumura’s
work to be close in spirit to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs of “S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED” (1971) to
illuminated movie screens from the late 1970s to the 1990s, which Hiroshi Senju’s magnificent and eerie waterfall paintings.
explore time, light, and movement in ways heavily influenced
by modern technologies and cultures of spectacle as well as by What is special about Kajioka’s work is his use of invisible but
traditional Japanese aesthetics. palpable flows to reflect, not only on the limits of vision, but also
those of audition. “The chill of the night air inhales the words that
Toshiyuki Kajioka, who studied neo-classical nihonga painting emerge from my mouth,” he writes of his experience standing by
in art school, reflects on the limits and affect of perception in a river at night. “A tremendous silence rings in my ears, drowning
more abstract terms. Kajioka’s process begins by stretching wet out all sound.” Given the close relationship between painting and
hemp paper over a wooden panel. He coats that surface with sumi calligraphy in the East Asian ink arts, the ways images and words
ink, then covers that inked surfaced with etched pencil lines. intersect and diverge have always been a core issue. Such tensions
Next, another layer of ink, this time a mixture of Japanese and undergird the modernism of Yuichi Inoue and Toko Shinoda. On
Indian inks, is applied to the surface, after which another round the other hand, it is rare to find artists, like Kajioka, who have
of curving and swirling pencil lines are drawn, followed by more embraced ink to reflect on varieties of the non-visible beyond those
detailing with ink, and so on and so forth, until, as he says, “my related to vision, to use ink to address the ear as well as the eye.
work becomes night itself.” While from a distance Kajioka’s Sound and image replace the classical pairing of word and image.
paintings look like solid black monochromes, stepping closer the
viewer becomes enrapt with the realization that his surfaces swarm Whereas Hasumura’s ghostly theatricality seems still linked to
with minute articulations. His nights are not empty voids. Like an the brush forces of calligraphy, Kajioka’s night cacophonies thus
unsleeping child’s bedroom closet, or a wayfarer’s witching hour break with the literati tradition of the ink arts. Because his use of
wood, things lurk in Kajioka’s inks ink bears no genetic relationship to calligraphy, Kajioka is free to
access realms beyond the literate eye. The Bokujinkai challenged
This uncanny tension between a monochrome lack of visibility the external limits of writing; Kajioka the internal limits of the
and a subtle infinity of tonal and formal variations relates to an image as a purely visual phenomenon. Interested in the limits of
experience Kajioka had as a high school student, in which he the sensible, his work opens ink on to a new coupling between
was struck by the strange and unnerving palpability of strained the unheard and unseen. If Inoue’s calligraphy unconsciously
perception while standing above a flowing river in the middle of harbors liquid echoes (splishes and sploshes) through an emphasis
the night. “Squinting my eyes, I can barely make out the water’s on gesture, and Hasumura’s tissue reliefs use washi to accentuate
surface, unable to capture any shape or detail, as the current passes the immaterial yet tactile forces of ink environments, Kajioka’s
before my eyes and disappears into further darkness,” he writes, borderline non-images insist that ink is not so much silent as filled
in a text included elsewhere in this volume. “The world I see with non-sound. Sumi lives on by embracing its ghosts.
remains small, no matter how many places I go. And yet, if that
small ephemeral world were to disappear, what would remain?” he From “SUMI: Japanese Ink Painting from Post-War to the
Present” (SEIZAN Gallery)