Fountain – On Generating- On Generating

2009

Embroidery on cloth

500 x 550 cm

Exhibited at

2009 Stitch by Stitch, Tokyo Metropolitan TEIEN Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan

2011 Prism Lag, Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum, Kyoto, Japan

Fountain – On Generating- On Generating

The images featured;
Mourner No.21, Sculpture, Claus Sluter (France,15C)
Las Meninas, Baroque painting, Diego Velázquez (Spain,17C)
Leather clothes (Ancient Egypt, Unknown)
Cat’s cradle (the game)
Stand cover, silk with kyokechi-dyed designs of flowering trees and paired-birds (Shōsō-in temple, Japan, 8C)
Oshira-sama, Indigenous (local religion) god, (Japan, Unknown)
Calico pattern (India,18C)
Hermes and the infant Dionysus, Greek sculpture, Praxiteles (ancient Greek, Unknown)
Wild boar, ancient cray figure (Japan, 5C)
God wooden image (Japan, 12C)
Embroidery on silk, Tenjukoku (Heavenly Paradise) scene (Chugu-ji temple, Japan, 7C)
Illustrations of knitting (United States, 20C)
Landscape painting (China, 17C)
Rococo Tapestry designed by François Boucher (France, 18C)
Traditional knot (Japan, 20C)
Ceramic pattern (Korea, 16C)
Tamamushi Shrine, miniture shrine (Hōryū-ji temple, Japan, 7C)
Ex-Voto de 1662, Baroque painting, Philippe de Champaigne (France, 1662)
Louis XIV, Baroque painting, Hyacinthe Rigaud, (France, 18C)

The images embroidered on the thin cloth are referenced from various fine arts as well as non-art materials produced in the past and the present such as ancient sculptures, masterpieces of European painting, cat’s cradle (play), ancient Egyptian clothes, a Chinese landscape painting, a painting of Japanese ancient furniture, and illustrations of knitting in the present period. Threads underneath the embroideries are connected to each other like rhizomes, and it can be seen from the surface because the cloth is translucent. These motifs are gathered purposefully across the realms of fine art and non-art because I intended to confront the “fountain of creation” itself and their connections behind the artificial stratification of art as painting, sculpture, craft, design, non-art, music, dance, poem, performance, writing and so on, which we cannot usually avoid.

Photo by

Tadasu Yamamoto / Keizo Kioku

This work was exhibited at