Woods X

Fri, 16 December, 2016Sun, 5 February, 2017

ShugoArts Roppongi

A woods is a space with an intertwined thickness formed not only by trees, but various living things, water, air, sound, smell, and signs. It breathes and is rooted in the folds of the earth, which is woven out of mountains and valleys. The sightline exchanged between the mountains and valleys in the woods forms a woven space of diagonal lines and the density of light and shade creates a multi-centric structure. The vertical and horizontal lines that appear in this multi-center also support the diagonal structure. I attempted to incorporate this structure as a “woods” within the sculptural structure. The sightline of the forest gradually arouses emotion as a matrix of tactility, and though conceptual, it triggers an emotional state of reciprocal motion. This is where the body intervenes. Air, water, and the rhythm of sound drift across the surface of the material via the body, and slowly take shape as a sculpture.

Shigeo Toya, November 2016

About Exhibition

Relief-style sculptures dating back to the Mesopotamian era, female molds recalling the torsos of people and animals that were preserved as cavities in the ruins at Pompeii, Michelangelo’s David, Koun Takamura (1852-1934) and his son Kotaro’s (1883-1956) work, which embodied the struggle Edo-type carvings on the cusp on the modern Meiji era and Rodin-style, modern Western sculpture, Medardo Rosso’s(1858-1928) work, which might be seen as the antithesis of Rodin(1840-1917), Arte Povera, Mono-ha, etc.

After undertaking an analytical study of art from all times and places, and arriving at his own original view of sculptural history, Shigeo Toya’s (b.1947) practice occupies a special place as constructive sculptural expression for the 21st century.

Appreciating sculpture requires a toughness unlike the literary approach that can sometimes be useful in understand a painting. Takaaki Yoshimoto (1924-2012) concluded his book Takamura Kotaro with the line “the incomprehensibility of sculpture.” As this suggests, it is necessary to access a different sensory channel than the one we rely on when looking at a painting.

It is impossible to overemphasize the fact that Shigeo Toya’s wholly unique sculptural art came to fruition in the Far East nation of Japan. In this exhibition, we present the tenth work in Toya’s Woods series, which he has continued to pursue as his lifework since making the first piece in 1987, in ShugoArts’ new space. In conjunction with this work, the gallery’s second room will be used to present some of the artist’s latest small works as well as works from the past.

Shugo Satani, ShugoArts

Information

Shigeo TOYA "Woods Ⅹ"

Dates

16 Dec 2016– 5 Feb 2017

Venue

ShugoArts

Hours

11am ‒ 7pm, （12:00-18:00 on Sun., closed on Mon. and Public Holidays）

Opening Party

Date&Time

16 Dec 2016, 5pm – 7pm

Contact

Shigeo TOYA

View Detail

Born in Nagano, Japan, in 1947. Currently lives and works in Saitama. Toya started his artistic career with his attempt to reconstruct sculpture as a medium, which had been deconstructed by the preceding art movements such as postminimalism and mono-ha. Since the 1970s, the artist has diligently pursued the principles and structures of sculpture, which resonate with the epistemological foundations of our very existence, underscoring their essence and possibility through his artmaking practice. By manipulating various art histories of all times and places, encompassing the period of cave paintings and Greco-Roman sculptures to contemporary art, with his bona fide sculptural philosophy, Toya has been recognized as one of the leading sculptors in Japan, Asia and the Pacific at large. The artist received the Art Encouragement Prize of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Japan in 2004 and his Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon in 2009. He is also a Professor Emeritus at Musashino Art University.

Selected exhibitions: Toya Shigeo Sculpture, Nagano Prefectural Art Museum, Nagano, 2022-2023, The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, 2023; Body of the Gaze: from Scatter to Linkage, from Linkage to Accumulation, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2022; Shigeo Toya Forest – Lake: Regeneration and Memory, Ichihara Lakeside Museum, Chiba, 2021; Body of the Gaze, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2019; Shigeo Toya−Sculpture to Emerge, Musashino Art University Museum & Library, Tokyo, 2017; Memories in the cave, Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Shizuoka, 2011-12; Shigeo Toya : Folds, Gazes and Anima of the Woods, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi, 2003; The 3rd Kwangju Biennale, Kwangju, 2000; Forest of Visions, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 1995; Yama – Mori ‒ Mura, Kuma Museum of Art, Ehime, 1994; The First Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993; The 43rd Venice Biennale, Japanese Pavilion, Venice, 1988; Selected publications: Shigeo Toya−Sculpture and Words (Choukoku-To-Kotoba）1974-2013, Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, 2014; Shigeo Toya−Sculpture to Emerge, Musashino Art University Museum & Library, 2017