椿昇 / Noboru Tsubaki

Noboru Tsubaki (Contemporary artist)

Graduated the Faculty of Fine Arts, Kyoto City University of the Arts. 

He exhibited “Fresh gasoline” at Against Nature in 1989 – his idea becoming the title of the exhibition – and greatly influenced the future Japanese contemporary art scene.

Participated in the Venice Biennale 1993. 

He exhibited the giant inflatable grasshopper “Insect World – Grasshopper” at Yokohama Triennale 2001. 

Held solo exhibitions at Art Tower Mito in 2003, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto in 2009, and Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima in 2012.

He consistently uses balloons as a medium to make huge humorous toys that suggest cautions to the critical circumstances of contemporary societies.

He has directed regional art projects “Sakate + Hishio project” in 2013, and “Shodoshima Future Project” in 2016, which brought upon a positive economic impact as part of the Setouchi Triennale. Serves as director for the AOMORI Triennale since 2017.

Engaging in art education over many years at the Fine and Applied Arts Department of Kyoto University of Art and Design, where he currently serves as a professor, he has transformed graduation exhibitions to art fairs, and has founded “ARTOTHÈQUE” to promote the domestic art market. Also as the director of ARTISTS’ FAIR KYOTO since 2018, he positions art as an innovative tool to establish sustainable societies.

Why do his extremely orthodox screen paintings depicted in gold leaves sell so well? I find myself reluctant to verbalise the reason. There are many artists, like him, who choose risky methods of directly expressing the Japanese tradition, and it is difficult to negate that they all expose us to a certain sense of danger. It may be easy to call them the “NEORINPA”, but I do not wish to participate in falling into commercialism by doing so. One thing for certain, is that he does not place his work upon such extensions of Japanese tradition, and this can be subtly detected in the golden surplus of seas. It may be due to the noise derived from how he continues to question the abstract – different to Kazimir Malevich’s methods of interrogation. His golden screen paintings already had overtones of processes of abstraction from the beginning due to their rules of design; mixed with his experiences studying abroad in Italy and Switzerland, a hybrid world is being established. Whatever the reason, it is a formidable thing to make one crave for something.

(Ryo Shinagawa)

An artist who has acquired an iconology that allows anyone to recognise who’s work it is powerful! Her work infects those who see it, as a unique symbol. “I’ve seen it!”, “I have it too!”, “I saw it at his place!”. There is no doubt that this infectious quality is one of art’s most fundamental powers. Everyone is drawn to a powerful symbol, and yearns to own it. Of course, no day passes without artists praying for the advent of such a “god”. A few years ago, this small wave started in the graduation exhibition of a small art university in the East, and in the blink of an eye it was invading Asia starting with Taiwan and Malaysia. Even with the iconography seen on the internet, this blue becomes engraved to the mind, however, once exposed to the pressure of its raw paint outside the mediocre screen, we are vulnerably attacked by an extraordinary fetish. Though Bruno Latour said that there is no pathway between iconoclasm and fetish, people push his advice to the side, trying to gather in the grace of her gravity. I fantasise her continuing to create until every collector on earth own’s this gravity.

(Mina Katsuki)

I first encountered her work at the graduation exhibition of the Kyoto City University of Arts Graduate School. Art, especially painting, is a hot field where every day and night the most talented people from all over the world continue to extensively produce new images. In sports it may be to see a fantastic shoot at the World Cup, and in opera it may be the thrilling encounter with a tenor singer. But as the destiny of one who handles images, artists must accept the cruelty that this may weather, be consumed and turn into a thing of the past in an instant. This is the reason why it is not easy to continue creating iconography with new discoveries each time it is seen, and does not become boring. Then, to be blessed with the talent of being able to continue holding the brush abundantly, freely depicting rich colours and complex lines, is surely a rare thing. Last year in a group exhibition at a gallery in Kaohsiung Taiwan, I saw the local collectors becoming fanatical over her work. If there was to be one word to perfectly fit her work, it would be fanaticism. Experience the ecstasy like that of an opera house in standing ovation after the aria of a primadonna, in front of her work.

(Tomoko Takagi)

One of the emerging artists who made a sudden breakthrough at last year’s AFK. It was inevitable that the goddess of art would smile upon him as he did already have a sufficient career, not quite fitting for the term emerging, and was under the technical guidance of his recommender Ohba. Instantly, sharp-eyed directors from overseas purchased his work, he was received well at the private presentation held at the Shimogamo Saryo shortly after, and has also been invited to a group exhibition to be held in a Taiwanese commercial gallery, becoming a current figure of attention between connoisseurs. However, in contrast to such decorative facts, his canvas is one of deep tranquility that one could not come up with a word other than serene. A nature that one would never become tired of seeing, spreads across the luring surface of quiet water, which at a glance seems indifferent. Nothing in particular is depicted, and there is nothing preachy about it like an abstract painting; I had goosebumps when I randomly placed some silver grass, cut from a bush and wrapped in paper, in front of his work propped up on the alcove. We must celebrate the long-awaited birth of an independent painting, not influenced by the Japanese environment, or the IT business office.

(Naosuke Wada)

I believe he is in the middle of a shoot at a coalmine in Inner Mongolia as I write this. Making full use of his potential as a Chinese who lives in Japan and an English-speaker, he quickly became assistant to Cai Guo-Qiang at PARASOPHIA as he enters university, called by Cai as support for every exhibition thereafter, and also assisting the Indian guest artist in Shodoshima during Setouchi Triennale, getting a glimpse of the art etiquette amongst the top starting from an early stage. Such fruits are naturally incarnated in his work, but a simple sentence to explain his gifts would be, his formidable volume of production and travel distance. It is obvious that there is no shortcut or magic to flourishing as an artist; the overt fact that he continues to travel and observe, releasing the shutter in the midst of things, is what sustains him. Since being awarded the President’s Award at the graduation exhibition this February, he has been stepping up steadily winning awards at various competitions, and there must be no objection in overlapping the weight of the continental DNA, with the fact that his work holds an air of lucid eastern knowledge, unimaginable from someone as young as him.

(Kenryou Gu)

There are people here and there who disregard the fact that effort does not pay off and simply pursue their fetish. Artists are definitely one of these species. If effort is something that one is obliged to do, artists are those who wave goodbye to such things eternally. Imanishi’s paintings are tremendously thick. He bores grooves with the brush up-side-down, into the heavy oil-based mud (let’s not call it paint), heavy as an oil field, with layer after layer of oil accumulated like the stratum. He repeatedly leaves traces in the oil-based mud like Enku and Mokujiki. It even seems like a confession about eastern practices, in regards to the oil paint and brush born under the long tradition of Western Europe. After being absorbed in the canvas of eternal monochrome faults, you will discover the subtle residues of an image left behind as you step away, one by one from the canvas, thinking about the earth’s life in a distant geological period. An abstract journey like that in Powers of Ten surpassing time and space, repeats creation and destruction in his screen. His solo exhibition in Korea should be starting soon; what kind of encounter will the powder-sprayed pottery passed on to Japan from the Joseon Dynasty make with his fetish towards oil-based mud?

(Shinya Imanishi)