A View From Tokyo: Between Man and Matter

Giuseppe Penone, Breath 5  1978

The clay is modelled on the imagined shape of a breath of air, exhaled from the artist’s mouth. At the top is the form of the interior of Penone’s mouth, squeezed into the clay. The impression along the side of the clay is of the artist’s leg, wearing jeans, as he leans forward. Penone has made many works concerning the impression of man on nature. For Breath Penone has spoken of the influence of mythological explanations of the creation of man.

Gallery label, January 2016

Mario Merz, Cone  c.1967

At the X Tokyo Biennale, Merz showed a wallbased work based on the Fibonacci sequence. This is a mathematical series where each number is the addition of the previous two numbers. This series can be represented visually as a spiral or a cone. Merz used these forms often in his works. He originally installed Cone with a pot of boiling beans hidden inside. Steam rising from its hollow suggested the presence of a source of energy. With its size and proportions, Cone could also suggest a hiding place for a single person.

Gallery label, December 2020

Barry Flanagan, ringn ‘66  1966

ringn ’66 is formed by pouring a hundredweight (50.8 kilograms or 112 pounds) of sand onto the floor from a more or less fixed point above. Once the designated quantity has been poured, four handfuls of sand are taken (or carved) from the top of the cone, and each handful is then allowed to run down opposite sides of the cone, effectively modelling the sculpture.

Jiro Takamatsu, Oneness of Cedar  1970

The artist has explained the origin of this work: ‘One day, I was at a bus stop looking at the rugged trunk of a roadside tree for quite some time. I began to think that inside that tree, there must also exist a square pillar, the surface of which could be planed smoothed like the pillars that were used to build my house … Scientists seem to think about the relationships that exist between objects, but in my case (and in the case of many other artists), I think about the relationships between objects and myself.’

Gallery label, December 2020

Jiro Takamatsu, Oneness of Concrete  1971

This work belongs to Takamatsu’s Oneness series. In these works, he explores the complex nature of everyday materials. For each Oneness piece, he would select a single material and then manipulate it. By doing this, he demonstrated its transformative potential as well as its unique quality. For the artist, this process was a means to achieve a ‘more total relation’ with a particular substance. The series can be read as Takamatsu’s comment on the rapid industrialisation in Japan after the end of the Second World War. During this time, traditional relationships to the natural world were overtaken by the development of consumer culture.

Gallery label, December 2020

Reiner Ruthenbeck, Corner Cloth  1974, 1975

‘I have reduced formal structures as far as possible. The result seems to offer relatively little nourishment to the intellect. I would like thereby to bring the viewer to a contemplative, holistic acceptance of my art.’ So Ruthenbeck expressed his aspirations for his work. Pinned to the walls, the metal eyelets that secure this sculpture in place and hold the fabric taut are almost invisible, creating the impression that it floats of its own accord. However its position in the corner of the gallery highlights the boundaries of the room, locating it securely in space.

Gallery label, January 2016

Susumu Koshimizu, From Surface to Surface  1971, remade 1986

Koshimizu investigates the substance of wood by sawing planks into different shapes, exposing their surface qualities through different kinds of repetitive cuts. Koshimizu was part of Mono Ha (‘School of Things’), which reacted against the embrace of technology and visual trickery in mid-1960s Japanese art. They sought to understand ‘the world as it is’ by exploring the essential properties of materials, often combining organic and industrial objects and processes.

Gallery label, January 2016

Bruce Nauman, Untitled  1965

Gilberto Zorio, Terracotta Circle  1969

Terracotta Circle looks back to ancient Greek and Roman ideas about human proportion. The diameter is based on the artist’s arm-span. The circle was moulded as he moved around at floor level. The work also marks out the height of the body, as a glass platform with a thin layer of lead hangs at head height. Many of Zorio’s early sculptures explored energy and change. He created works in which crystals grew on metallic structures, substances altered colour when damp and painted surfaces glowed under ultra-violet lights.

Gallery label, February 2020

Noriyuki Haraguchi, Airpipe C  1969

Haraguchi is from Yokosuka, the primary US naval base in Japan during the Vietnam War. He has said he came to understand ‘the true nature of creativity’ after watching a jet fighter being transported onto the naval base in 1968. He handcrafted a full-scale reproduction of the jet’s tail and made a related series of Airpipe constructions that resemble the jet engine exhausts. Bulging out from the wall, this piece demonstrates Haraguchi’s ability to combine a minimalist sculptural vocabulary with the aesthetics of militarism and heavy industry, raising questions about the environment, modernisation and war.

Gallery label, January 2016

Carl Andre, Last Ladder  1959

One of Andre’s early carvings, Last Ladder was made by cutting a series of concave forms into a rough-hewn beam of wood that had been salvaged from a construction site. Andre intended his cutting to reveal the distinctive qualities of this raw material. He later said of this sculpture: ‘the wood was better before I cut it than after. I did not improve it in any way.’

Gallery label, January 2016