Rikaku kawauchi

Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1990

Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan

“For me, to draw is neither to impress an image onto a surface, nor a matter of giving oneself over to the contingencies associated with my materials as they unravel on the canvas. For me, to accept the contingency of others is also to grapple with and learn to accept one’s own physicality. My body reacts instantly to what happens in the real world at the moment that the image in my mind takes shape on the canvas. This process is as much a dialogue as it is a struggle, or a game, or a collaborative endeavor. When I work with wire, resin, or neon, this tension is abruptly manifested in my own body. This is also the moment when the form of the work becomes complete. At first, all I do is to poke roughly at the material, and try to bend it, sometimes violently: it doesn’t always bend to my will, so to speak. (Imagination and expectation travel on a trajectory parallel to reality.) Then, all at once, a form that cleaves perfectly to my own space emerges, and my body senses a pushing back similar to what I feel with my paintings and drawings. As soon as I meet this resistance, the material and the space it occupies that used to be soft and supple seems to congeal and harden, and I am no longer able to intervene.

It is almost as if the work has now forsaken me: there is now a membrane-like barrier in between us. I remove my hands, and step back, so that this membrane can remain tense and inflated — and so that I may continue to feel the work pushing back against me.”

GALLERIES:

Era Gallery

Waitingroom