cloth and culture NOW the project the artists the exhibition the book

 

 

Cloth & Culture NOW
the artists - Jun Mitsuhashi, Japan

Japanese culture naturally forms the foundation of all my works and this is an extremely important factor. Not in a particularly religious or spiritual way, but in rather ordinary, every day things or experiences that have accumulated over the course of my life. Things that I have experienced for myself such as “food” “home” “seasons” etc., and perhaps a sense of aesthetics such as one finds in ceremonies and manners/rules of etiquette.

From these things the keywords such as “temporal space and time” “ambience and physical place” “comparison” “moon and calmness” keep on popping up. I am fascinated by Japanese culture; the pleasure of subtlety and exaggeration, harmony and contrast, light and shade, can be discovered in so many places.

Discovery, admiration, enjoyment – these form the cornerstone of my work. The essence of at is to open up people’s hearts and minds and I believe that it should give those around positive power, not negative. I show a world which is in opposition to one of anxiety, fear and unhappiness, I believe the role of art and its value of art lies in making people feel.

Incorporated into my works are breakable or intransient items and there is pleasure in discovering a tiny bit of light within them; not the bright light of the sun beaming down, but in the same way that seeing something in the pale moonlight moves your spirit. My works are not brightly coloured, they do not release an overwhelming sense of being, but quietly and inconspicuously, the installations move you, showing that there is a world among the small and trivial; it is like peeping through a window.

I cannot help but be influenced by cultures outside Japan as I am surrounded by such information. It is difficult to explain exactly how, but in the surface colour and shape, the way I use materials etc. But, in spite of this, as I said earlier, I believe my works reflect my own perception of Japanese culture. But that is not to say that the influence of other cultures is a bad thing.

I apologise for not being able to express this effectively.

 

JAPAN

Masae Bamba Hideaki Kizaki Jun Mitsuhashi
Shoko Nomura Masaaki Tate Mitsuo Toyazaki

 

University College for the Creative Arts
 
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