In the forest, causal relationship does not apply. Scientifically speaking, a causal relationship is a relationship between cause and effect, so perhaps one could say that in the forest modern scientific thinking does not apply. Nevertheless, from ancient times hunters have survived by catching prey in forests. Thus there has to be some causal relationship surrounding the capture of prey, since without it hunting would yield no results. This suggests the existence of causal relationship in something other than the modern scientific sense. We could go back to Buddhist thought and call it karma. The point is that when the connection between cause and effect is beyond the limits grasped by modern observation, it is a stretch to call it a relationship. The relationship is removed, leaving just cause and effect. This means there is a distance (gap) between karma and causal relationship. And I think that Toya’s sculptures make manifest this distance (gap) between karma (the world) and causal relationships (civilization).
But perhaps I have arrived at the conclusion too hastily. Let me go back to the beginning. The reason I brought up hunting and karma is because when I came to write about Toya’s sculptures, I recalled an essay I had read a long time ago that weighed on my mind for some time afterwards. Though my memory of the content is now faint (a shadow, so to speak), from what I recall it went something like this.
A critic went into a forest with a hunter. Keen to show off his peculiar skills, the hunter shouldered his gun and aimed into space. The critic was puzzled. He found it hard to imagine that a prey would rush towards them from the direction in which the hunter had pointed his gun. But after a while, a prey suddenly came rustling out of the forest from that very direction. As if knowing this in advance, the hunter brought the animal down with pinpoint accuracy. The critic expressed surprise at what seemed to be a supernatural power. “It’s experience and sense,” the hunter replied. “And the smell of the wind.”
We do not call this kind of thing a causal relationship. Some people may call it intuition or instinct, but a hunter could not thirve on this alone. So there must be a degree of certainty involved. But this certainty is either beyond the limits of what a normal person can grasp with their five senses, or is something far wilder. Which is why, even though we cannot call it a causal relationship, cause and effect exist there. In other words, normal causal relationships do not exist. Hence, as I said at the start, in the forest, causal relationship does not apply.
As a sculptor, Shigeo Toya has devoted a lot of thought to the origins and beginnings of sculpture. In a similar vein to what I stated above, though there are naturally areas in common between sculpture itself and modern sculpture, they are not the same thing. For the most part, modern sculpture is created based on scientific causal relationships concerning the human body, what is known as “movement.” Basically, sculpture refers to masses of matter, although the only part we actually view is the surface. What role, then, does the interior play in sculpture? Is it superfluous? No, it is not. The surface is a manifestation of the dynamic that lies hidden inside. Which is why tracing the surface with the eyes also amounts to viewing the interior. Without an interior there is no surface. The equivalent of this for the human body is anatomy. Unless we carry out a dissection, we cannot see a person’s insides, but in fact the skeletal structure and muscles determine a person’s surface appearance. So it is with modern sculpture, in that even though we cannot see the interior, out of logical necessity it prescribes and determines the exterior. As someone living in the present, the maker is obliged to create sculpture in this way.
However, this way of thinking about sculpture emerged in the modern period in line with advances in scientific thought. But sculpture, or for the sake of argument sculpture-like things, has existed from long ago. Unmistakably, sculpture/statuary has been around from the age of hunting-gathering. And because these sculptures or statues are “things” that exist independently of the world around them, as material objects they naturally have interiors. But these interiors are not the same as those of modern sculptures. To be precise, there is no causal relationship between interior and exterior. The form constituting the surface is not an extension of the interior. In this sense, in primitive statuary/sculpture, the alliance between the exterior and the interior is broken. The interior becomes dark, a shadow accompanying the visible form. But this does not mean that the interior is superfluous. All it means is that the there is no relationship between the interior and exterior in an anatomical, easy-to-understand sense.
For a long time, Toya has referred to this kind of surface where this is no relationship between interior and exterior as “relief-like.” A relief is also made up of matter of some kind, but because the surface lacks independence as a material object, it is naturally contiguous with the world. It is as Takaaki Yoshimoto raised in his essay “Chokoku no wakaranasa” (The incomprehensibility of sculpture), the question posed being whether it was necessary for reliefs, which had existed since ancient times, to stand on their own as sculptures. Behind this was the establishment of the ego and the need for humans to create for themselves as a kind of effigy of the ego an image independent from the world. And running alongside this are causal relationships: ecause I (cause) exist, there is the world (effect). This is also an important premise behind modern sculpture: because an interior (I) exists, an exterior (form) can be created.
On the subject of “the incomprehensibility of sculpture,” Yoshimoto contended that if such “ease of understanding” was fundamental to sculpture, then perhaps the firmly established ego on which it was premised did not exist in Japan. But if so, how could something be called sculpture simply by existing autonomously as a physical object? Surely, in the sense that it was subject to the world, it remained an extension of relief. Yoshimoto asserted that such things were “difficult to understand” as sculpture.
However, being difficult to understand as modern sculpture and easy to understand as sculpture are completely different. What made the former difficult to understand was the relationship of the interior to the relief. Here again arises karma. If cause and effect in causal relationships are premised on independence from the world, then cause and effect in karma are not “related” in the sense that both remain inherent to the world. Karma is contiguous to the world. This is closely related to relief being contiguous with the world.
Let us return to the subject of the hunter. A hunter does not confront their prey as an autonomous ego. They are inherent to the world, and by listening intently to and physically experiencing this inherence they grasp the direction of the world. As a result, they acquire the exterior (form) that is their prey spontaneously. This is also what we mean when we say that for a relief, the interior is not superfluous. In a form different from anatomical necessity, the interior and exterior are able to be expressed. In this case, however, unlike an easy-to-understand cause, the interior is always perceived as darkness, emptiness or a shadow. For someone who has not physically experienced such a feeling, this may seem like a supernatural power. Or, perhaps, like magic.
Regardless of what we call it, such a feeling is not necessarily unconnected to the exterior. Rather, in places like the forest where countable elements are infinitely intertwined, such a feeling is actually rational as an experience. If not, then our hunter would probably not have survived. A hunter is not a farmer or city-dweller managing production. And hunting is not a productive activity based on causal relationships, but the non-accumulative, split-second firing of a gun or capture of a prey. This amasses into something like experience. And it is the accumulation of such bodily sensations that is for Toya the forest. Even if sculpture premised on this adopts a modern form, at its root, hunting (not creation but work) is performed on each occasion as its shadow. We view the results in institutions such as art museums as “works,” but in fact these are not works but none other than an “actually existing process” as the accumulation of bodily sensations.
One does not need to “understand” such sculpture. One needs to thoroughly immerse oneself in its “incomprehensibility.” But to do this, one needs to refrain from “viewing” Toya’s sculptures according to mass, volume and form, to say nothing of the beauty of their sculpted shapes. Instead, one needs to “feel” (not“see”) Toya’s sculptures in accordance with the physical sensations in one’s own body, as if visually turning them over in one’s mind and recalling them. Naturally, this is different from actually touching them. “Touching” by feeling with the hands is itself a standardized experience bound by modern causality. In olden times, the visual and tactile senses were not separated. Or rather, they could not be separated. The visual sense was the remote utilization of the tactile sense to gauge whether a subject was dangerous when approaching from afar and touching it. Such utilizations of the tactile sense are very different from anatomical-like bodily sensations based on the principles of dissection.
When we sense danger, we do not take cognizance of every bone and muscle in our own bodies. We rely on inner sensations such as tension and relaxation, pain and anxiety, fear and expectation. And because these sensations are based on the accumulation of experience, they are in no way superfluous. These, too, are unmistakably the interior, connected directly to the exterior. But this does not mean they are separated from the world. They are closely related to all manner of material properties that make up the world, so that interior and exterior are conjoined. Certainly this may be “difficult to understand.” Even more so in a place like an art museum where the use of the tactile sensation is reduced to a minimum. But in order to break free from the binding of modern sculpture and connect to the outside world, we need to draw out our bodily sensations through Toya’s sculptures and in so doing resolve the rupture between the visual and tactile senses, bringing them together once again.
To begin with, what is the self to the world? Descartes defined space as extension by educing from the world the thinking self. If there is a law fundamental to modern sculpture, then surely it is this formula. But even if it is abstracted in this way, the ego contains a shadow that cannot be filled. Or rather, in educing the ego, an unavoidable shadow emerged. This is something that cannot be seen with our own eyes. We may be able to see our own arms and legs. But these are exterior, not interior. Seeing the interior is in principle impossible. Yet despite this, in order for the ego to confront the world, it must be infinitely (indubitably) clear. But for something that supposedly must be infinitely clear to be “invisible” is a contradiction in terms. It was in order to get around this that modern sculpture was born. One could even say that modern sculpture was the ego (cogito) changed into a visible form. Which is precisely why it must be as “easy to understand” as possible to the eye, and why its interior cannot possibly contain shadows.
However, even if the interior is filled with casual relationships and the ego visualized by externalizing it, the “invisibility” that originally dwells in the ego does not disappear. It lies hidden within. One might call this the remnants of connections with the world. However much clarity was demanded, relief-like properties never disappeared from modern sculpture.
To find out the extent to which the causal relationship-like human form that is the premise behind modern sculpture is the result of abstract manipulation and just how many shadows dwell in its interior, it is best to take a walk in the forest. Perhaps the place that was created in order to measure most clearly the abstract causal relationship between the human body and the outside world is the athletics field. There, everything is reduced to time and space, and the strength of the intent to exercise this reduction is demonstrated. In the forest, however, such time and space have no currency whatsoever. Regardless of the strength of one’s intent, the desired results are never forthcoming, and in fact such inflexibility invites mortal danger. To use a linguistic analogy, one could say the forest is hieroglyphic as opposed to ideographic. In a forest of hieroglyphs there are many gaps, but these are not semantic; they are closely connected to the topographical upper strata (not the surface) of the forest. This is one thing that is meant when a relief is described as topographical. The ground that makes up the topography is extremely complex and “difficult to understand,” but just like the forest, it is not as if there are no connections between the interior and the surface (unlike autonomous human bodies, our science provides no technology like X-rays that lets us know clearly the earth’s structure). These connections exist, but they are too concrete, and for this reason complex (difficult to understand).
What if we were to replace this forest, this massif composed of forests, valleys and rivers, with a lake? Would there be a difference between earth and rock and water? The answer is no. A lake is a pool of water collected in a rift in a massif, the source of which is in the mountains. Just as the upper strata of a forest are determined by the soil in a manner different from a causal relationship, the surface of a lake is prescribed by the mass of water beneath the surface. In other words, while the surface of water has characteristics different from a forest, it is still relief-like. As the name suggests, the venue for this exhibition, the Ichihara Lakeside Museum, is on the shore of a lake (Lake Takataki). Moreover, this lake is actually a reservoir formed by the construction of a massive dam on the Yoro River that flows through the Boso Peninsula. Apparently, as many as 110 houses were flooded when the dam was built. Of course, no matter how hard one looks, from the shore of the lake it is impossible to see through the surface of the water to this past reality. There is no causal relationship. But can we go as far as to say there is no karma? If there is not, why since ancient times have lakes been linked to human sacrifice? A large number of human figures have been dug up from burial mounds. These are thought to be yorishiro, objects capable of attracting spirits, in which sense they are different from reliefs. Though not sculptures as such, they are likely vessels for something. If so, they have interiors. And even though we cannot read them, passages to the exterior are folded into these objects. If we remove the causal relationship and call this karma, then who is to say these objects are unrelated to the origins of sculpture?
Toya’s sculptures are “difficult to understand” as modern sculpture. At the same time, due to this “incomprehensibility,” they close in on the origins of sculpture, on its beginnings, by way of the shadows of modern sculpture. When I say “close in on,” I mean that by way of an immediacy different from anatomical clarity they approach them magically. I have already touched on how this magicality is not a product of premodern times, but comprises an accumulation of concreteness based on the bodily sensations and experiences of hunters in forests, and therefore visible only as magical from a visual sense limited by modern times. But if we succeed in aligning the use of our visual sense with our tactile sense, this magicality instantly takes on realness. This realness is expressed in the “interfaces” or “boundaries” in Toya’s work. And it is here that the causal relationship surrounding sculpture momentarily corresponds with karma, and we simultaneously see/touch slim, shifting distances (rifts), or in other words the active fault lines of modern sculpture. When all is said and done, this is Toya’s forest, his water source as the roots of this forest.
(art critic)
