Fuyuki Mahera executes sculpture with the sort of wood matching each object. The audience is apt to take them for real ones.
After an interval of a year since the last exhibition, the three of his new works, ikkoku - exhaust opening and a cigarette*, ikkoku - crocodile-skin belt* and the other will be exhibited this time. (*titled temporarily) "I have the scene in myself. It attracts me without reasons" he says.
He tries to express not only the shape itself of the object but also an aftertaste or space the sculpture has. He is challenging his ability to bring out the words or power each object has as possible as he can. By wooden sculpture, Maehara expresses the traces someone left and the scene which has been abandoned.
For example, you can see a cigarette butt in front of the exhaust opening which is decayed. After finishing smoking the cigarette exactly to the end, someone trampled it down and chucked it out.
This scene has been staying there after a man went away. Who knows how long the time has passed… The other scene…
An old belt in crocodile skin is hung down.
The belt is cut halfway and the section can be seen.
What happened on the belt? What is the sculptor’s intention?
There is no imagination if this belt is not cut because we recognize it as a belt we know and are not shaken at all. In addition, Maehara’s artworks often remind us of the good old days. When we start meditating and talking with his reticent sculpture in silent, it seems to be a part of the scene we have seen before. He finds out the beauty or sympathy in decayed things because they reflect Maehara himself as something which is decayed or mortal.
In other words, we should feel the passing of the time on his artworks. They have the power to let us feel it. If there is no power on his sculpture, we feel nothing.
That is why we feel nostalgia in his artworks even if we do not have the memory of the scene Maehara expresses actually. * The text provided by YOKOI FINE ART.