Page 163 - japanese and korean art Utterberg Collection Christie's March 22 2022

Gizan is a contemporary sculptor concerned with the human form
and steeped in the traditional art and culture of Japan. Born in
Tokyo in 1968, he now lives and works in Saitama Prefecture. As
a young man, he was a professional musician, specializing in rock
and jazz guitar. One day, when he was twenty-four-years old, he
visited an exhibition of Buddhist sculpture at a museum. That
changed his life. He spent the next six years learning to carve wood
sculpture—although he was told that he was too old to start—
and then entered on a seven-year apprenticeship with Iwamatsu
Shubun, a sculptor in Saitama, who was in a direct lineage
descending from the famous Meiji-period sculptor Takamura Koun
(1852–1934). Koun strove to promote the traditional art of wood
carving. Like Koun, his idol, Gizan works in a highly realistic style
defined by stunning craftsmanship.
Gizan became an independent artist at the age of thirty-eight,
around 2006, and began showing his work in exhibitions. His early
works featured famous Japanese historical figures. He then turned
to work imbued with a deeper spirituality and humanity, including
Buddhist and Shinto themes. A period of monastic training in
retreat on Mount Hiei furthered his understanding of Buddhism.
Gizan’s process involves working from a plaster model and
optimizing his work using a sculpture point machine that consists
of a kind of crosspiece or frame with three points that measure
precisely the width, depth and height of his model. He finishes a
sculpture with chisels only, never sanding down the surface and
never coating the surface with paint or lacquer. Even the iron
staples, or clamps, that hold the individual pieces of wood together
are left exposed—here just above the biceps, for example.
The figure shown here manifests a primordial act of prayer, an
instinct the artist believes to be essential to our humanity.
Gizan is currently working on a commission for Ninna-ji Temple
in Kyoto.