YASUI TOMOTAKA

Vertical and Horizontal

Recent years have seen me pondering our awareness of the vertical and horizontal, through people and architecture. The garments worn by my sculpted gures oten unconsciously employ a crosshatched lattice design. It strikes me this is probably the manifestation of an awareness of gravity, or of the earth’s core. The connection between this and architecture is thus: buildings are built in horizontal and vertical dimensions, however this is not in order to prioritize function and comfort in people’s lives, but because it feels like proof that the building itself exists in the manner of a living thing. For example, a forest full of trees, or a horizon where sea meets sky, have workings that are there precisely because they possess vertical and horizontal properties rendered visible by gravity, and in that specic place. Crosshatched lines do not just intersect, and buildings too, are the outcome of a complex construction process through people, in which inuence is exerted by space and time in that location; just as people live, aected through gravity by the things, tangible and intangible, present in the spaces of nature and society. The chic brick-red hotel in Kabukicho, a neighborhood that typies the city within a city that is Shinjuku, with its complex mix of so many things and happenings, just happens to have the same vertical/horizontal lattice design on its exterior. Beside the hotel lobby where visitors pass to and fro, is a gallery made to resemble a tokonoma alcove. In this space will be installed sculptures of a hat, clothes and shoes; sculptures constructed from poplar and shell inlay cubes based on horizontal and vertical lines, in the way that people are shaped by myriad phenomena and things. This collective mass of sculptures will connect with the surrounding space, fanning out along horizontal and vertical lines. The gures thus formed will detach and head o somewhere with visitors and travelers.

縦と横

近年、人と建築を通して縦と横の意識について考えている。私が作る人物彫刻の服は、縦横の格子状のデザインが無意識によく使われている。今思えば、それは重力に対する、または地球の核の意識への現れなのだと思う。そのことがなぜ建築と関係があるのかというと、建物は水平垂直を基準に建てられているが、それは単に人が生活するための機能や心地よさを重視するというより、建物自体が生き物のように存在している証に感じるからである。例えば、樹木が立ち並ぶ森、水平線を境にした空と海は、重力によって見えてくる縦と横の特性であり、その場だからこそある営みがある。格子状の縦と横の線は、単調に交わるものではなく、建物もまた人を通して、その場の空間と時間が影響し複雑に構築された結果なのだ。人が重力を通して、自然や社会という空間に存在するモノとコトに影響され生きているように。

A of Misty

2019

90x40x20cm

poplar, mother of pearl, acrylic resin,oil stain