栗原 針山 Shinzan Kurihara

Regaining Our Substance ｜ Installation

What has been visible to us up to now may have been a virtual image.
In this age of increasing confusion between truth and falsehood, COVID-19 has revealed to us how fragile are the things that individuals think they understand and believe in. What then should people believe?

“In order for us to regain our substance, we need to return to our starting point and face ourselves squarely.”

SHINZAN KURIHARA, a sho artist who creates works based on the themes of boundaries and inner conflict, sets up each of his works and what it reflects in a space and attempts to represent in stages its actual substance together with a virtual image, how the virtual image collapses and ultimately how we can discover the light inside ourselves.

Through his proposal that “regaining our substance” may be what is required in the post-COVID-19 era, we would like to ask the viewers of this exhibition to focus their attention on how they think the world should be after the pandemic is over.

KITAI


MOKOMOKO - BORDER ｜ Calligraphic Style

Today, the evolution of social networking sites and AI has enabled people to instantly connect worldwide, and has led to an accelerating development of borderlessness. This is something good and useful. However, are the human minds keeping up with this development? For example, there are times when false rumors and fake news spread in an instant, without its information being looked into more precisely to see if it is trustworthy. At times, this has been life-threatening, or have even driven some people to take their own lives. Borders within situations where we should control ourselves are also starting to vanish.

When we say border, most people would probably have an image of national borders, but what I wish to focus on in particular is the border that exists within an individual’s inner self. However, this is something extremely complex and sensitive. Its negative affect may lead to discrimination. Therefore, what is perhaps needed in modern society is not a border merely for differentiation, but instead, a border that is created as a positive result from plenty of conflicts. While this will help to stop the dilution of human nature, it should also help us to show true respect for one another.

Precisely speaking, this is a process of taking a step back to experience several conflicts through problems that are contrary to each other, and then searching for the light that serves as a clue to the solution, within the verge of its border. I have expressed this through my “Sho” (Japanese calligraphy) and have named this approach as MOKOMOKO - BORDER. The opposition within the conflict may extend to the dual nature of one’s inner self, individuality and universality, or, a universal theme of life and death. In Japanese, MOKOMOKO describes “the state of lumps forming one after another from its surroundings”. Through a distinctive way of creating ink, including the adjustment of the ink’s temperature by a unit of 1 degree, I have blurred the inks in some parts of the word in my “Sho” to create such lumps, in order to project various emotions including conflict. The word, along with its original meaning, is brought to life. Then, as the MOKOMOKO lines clashes and conflicts with each other, a faint but strong border is created between them, producing light. This also signifies that spaces and borders as a result of such conflicts, are what creates values. The MOKOMOKO ink seems as if it is spreading and getting bigger at this very moment, enabling it to keep its raw permanency.

Conflicts are originally a part of human nature, and we strive to search for the exit. The more severe this process is, the more the border that is left from it becomes a substantial, living glimmer of light, allowing us to regain the fundamental meaning of our existence. Indeed, the border which I propose is the strong light of salvation that will eventually appear, and also something that will open the way to the future from the conflicts and struggles that everybody has inside themselves.

Through an unexpected closure caused by the COVID-19, I believe that many of us were given the opportunity to face ourselves. Moving towards the post COVID-19 era, I hope that viewers will identify their own life with my works, while thinking how to seek for the light of border from beyond the chaotic conflict.

Shinzan Kurihara