ABOUT

THE ACT OF MAKING ART is like creating spirit, the essence of alcohol. To create a high-quality spirit is to get rid of impurities and to pursue the pure and finally, to reach nearly 90 percent purity. Similarly a work of art is a completed form which finally, in the end, represents the artist’s essence, after all that is superficial and surplus has been removed. The concept of complete, however, is an illusion, a misconception. Complete does not exist in art making. That is why artists become lifelong learners and continue working. Sculptors carve and polish stones, not to make beautiful stones, rather, the forms they make are the result of their search for the limits of their artistic capabilities.

When I traveled in Nepal about twenty-eight years ago, I met Sherpa tribe people, who lived in the highlands. Their lives were simple and beautiful. The simpler, the closer to the truth. The truth is no complicated, but very simple. Almost every one of my sculptures has roundness in it. Roundness is a basic form, and one of the most natural forms is a sphere. Although the Himalayan Range, when looked at from the Nepalese foothills, is a very steep mountain range, the basic ground still has roundness to it. The Himalayas stand as the spine of the great round earth.

Human beings grow older and lose the meekness of their childhood rapidly. When children go abroad, they learn new customs and languages quickly, and they adjust to the culture easily. It is a wonderful skill. We lose that ability when we grow up.

We need a great deal of concentration when we make art: perceiving the unnecessary and the necessary accurately, precisely, then leaving the necessary and removing the unnecessary. Sculpture is this continuous activity.

It was the noble class that supported art in medieval Europe. How many noble people are there in Japan today who support art? Every regional city in Japan is constructing monumental pieces representing instant culture. Art, one form of culture, cannot be rooted instantly. After all, it took a century for the Christian religion to permeate the country of Japan. It is necessary for artists in Japan today to consider what Japanese culture is going to do under the current circumstances. I would like to see young people establish a meeting point between Eastern and Western cultures.

Having visited Isamu Noguchi’s grave, I fulfilled one obligation. I felt that I finally had paid a visit to my father’s grave. I first met him in 1976. He gave me great courage to support myself as a young sculptor in Japan. Since then I have worked and lived as a sculptor, selflessly, as in a dream. I was introduced to Noguchi at Fukudaya Inn, where he often stayed. He was wearing a kimono and looked very mature. I drove him to the hospital, because he was ill. We walked next to each other, and he was shorter than I. Isamu Noguchi passed away in 1988. Now tens of his sculptures are located in New York and in Takamatsu. He spent his life searching for his identity, born between the East and the West. Therefore, it concerns me that his remaining sculpture in Takamatsu may be taken to New York someday.

Now, in our era, we should not just think about the East and the West, but we should also think about the whole earth and even the solar system surrounding the earth. The human body is composed of numerous cells. If each human being completes his or her life as fully as possible, as one single cell of the earth, then the earth as a whole will be rejuvenated. The rejuvenated earth will revitalize the solar system and the universe.

This is my message for the art of sculpture. Now I will get back and continue my art making.

KAZUTAKA UCHIDA

It is rare to meet an artist whose work is, at once, profoundly rooted in his or her own culture, but can also resonate with absolute clarity to those of us living across the ocean in another. One senses this possibility in the art of Kazutaka Uchida. His chosen medium, the elemental shapes he forms, their scale, and their overall effect form a universal language with a particulary evocative Japanese accent.

There is a fundamental aesthetic to Uchida's work that finds resonance in his Japanese heritage -- clean lines, subtle beauty, harmonious relationship, bold transformations, and respect and patience for his chosen medium of stone. And what strength and permanence! Whether individual works of art or installations, Uchida's sculptures often stand like the Japanese archipelago itself. The titles of his works give evidence of this interest -- "The Ocean and the Sun" or "Roundness of the Horizon." Their spiritual and physical relationship to Zen monastic gardens is evident.

His sculptural forms also manifest something more than cultural respect and continuity. In Uchida's works there is another level of the microcosmic that predates humanity. Again, the titles he gives his sculptures suggest this possibility. Like a subscript, their names often end with the words, "-- the Fossil," giving them a prehistoric reference. His sculptures' polished forms frequently seem embedded in rough stone, having simply been released by Uchida, the geologist.

That Uchida studied sculpture in the same Italian marble quarries where Michelangelo selected his stone offers insight into thier shared attitude that the artist simply reveals that which is embedded in nature. Whereas Michelangelo found this truth by sculpting stone to reveal the human soul, Uchida, as a man of his own age, manifests the same belief through an expressive manipulation on stone to reveal a universal abstraction. In doing this, he has found a timeless language that enriches our view of the world and enlivens age-old cultural beliefs.

Dr. David Robertson- Associate Director of the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

独創的な文化に深く根ざしつつ、海を隔てた他国の文化にも鮮烈に共鳴し得る作品を制作する作家に出会うことはとても少ない。ある意味で内田和孝氏の作品はこの可能性を秘めていると言えるだろう。彼の選ぶ素材、作り出す形、大きさ、そして日本の特色を伴った万物の表現を感じさせる作品全体の印象がそれである。

内田氏の基本的な美意識は作品に於ける日本文化に通じる、例えばきれいな線、静かな美しさ、作品刊の調和された相互関係、大胆な形態、そして彼の選んだ関素材に対する愛着と忍耐力の中に見ることができる。そしてそれはとても力強く普遍的なものだ！彼の作品は個々に見ても、複数のインスタレーションとして見ても時折日本の島々そのものの様に存在していることがある。これは“The Ocean and The Sun”、“Roundness of the horizon”等の作品タイトルからも感じられる。精神的かつ自然的な関わりを秘めている禅宗の庭園すら彼の作品中の日本的要素を証明している。

彼の造形は文化に対する眼差しやその継承だけに留まっていない。人間性を超えた小宇宙をも感じさせるのである。そしてこれも又彼の作品タイトルが暗示している。まるで追記された様に“---The Fossil”と言う言葉で度々締めくくられ､太古への関連性を与えている。彼の作品の磨かれた形態は頻繁に荒々しい石の中にはめ込まれているように見えるがこれは純粋に地質学的な面を持った内田氏から生み出されたものなのだ。

内田氏はミケランジェロが石を選んだ同じイタリア大理石の採石場で彫刻を学び、作家が自然の中に埋め込まれている“もの”を解放する姿勢に触れた。しかるにミケランジェロが人の魂を浮かび上がらせる彫刻と言うものの心理を見つけ、内田氏は今、石を巧妙に操り抽象的な万物を表現する事でその心理を理解している。こうして彼は我我の世界観をより豊かにし、昔ながらの文化の神髄を強調し得る時代を超えた表現をするのである。

シカゴ大学スマート美術館副館長

デイヴィット　ロバートソン