Opere (Works):
Kyoji Nagatani
From mythology to ritual
Critical essay by Lorenzo Bonini
Foreword
One
of the most widely diffused themes in the cultures of all ages is that of the
mother with a child her lap.
Sometimes it represents the Earth Mother of all mankind in ancient
religions, on occasions the Madonna and Child for the Christian religion,
a most special relationship between that
particular mother and that particular child.
One significant example has come down to us in the form of the mother and
child of Megara Hyblaea : this is a 78 cm tall limestone work dating back
to about 550 BC that is now housed in the National
Archaeological Museum in Syracuse. Another is the funerary statue of
a mother and Chi: Chianciano, in Tuscany: dating back to the second half
of the fifth century BC, it is a 100 cm tall limestone
work and is now in the Archaeological Museum in Florence. The subject and
even the gesture of the hands holding the baby are the same. In the first
statue, made in the shape of a bell, the body and the gesture are simplified and
rough, yet very immediate and expressive; in the second one, of Etruscan origin (its function was to contain the ashes of the
person in w-hose tomb it was found), the sculptor paid more attention to reality, focusing more on
the firm yet delicate grip with which the mother's
hands support the sleeping infant's body. At a later date, the methods of
depicting the Pietà, the Madonna lamenting the body of her dead Son,
spread from the countries of Northern Europe down into
Italy. In 1498-99. Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpted the Pietà in the
finest, most sublime image known to us.
Once
again. the mother holds her son in her lap, but this time it is not sleeping or
playing child she holds, but the adult Christ, who has died and been taken down
from the cross.
The image is one of pain and desperation, yet
because of the fact that the Madonna is holding her Son on her lap, just as she
did when He was a child, Michelangelo has her express all the tenderness
implicit in that relationship. Over the centuries, this work was to become the
symbol of sublimation in the awareness of peoples. Extraordinary in its
characteristics and proportions, it exercises a strong power of attraction over
popular imagination and sentiment: the holiness of the subject is transformed
into mythology by the community. The closest and contemporary artist who
demonstrated the ability to express the concept of mythology, reviving it in
formal terms with works of significant secular meaning, was Henry Moore, who
maximized the simplification of the forms in his 1936 stone sculpture Mother and
Child (London, British Council), succeeding in rendering the indissoluble bond
between mother and child, delivering the maternal attitude without describing
it, vigilant and protective.
Training
Kyoji
Nagatani is very familiar with the concept I have just described, partly because
his studies drew to a considerable extent on Western culture and especially on
Italy, which receives extensive attention in Japan's universities. During the
seventies, he visited a personal exhibition of the works of Giacomo Manzù being
held in Tokyo and was so fascinated by it that he decided to do some research
into the technique used by the great Italian maestro, even going so far as to
adopt it and use it when modeling his own pieces.
In a recent interview, he confessed that as a child he used to dream of
Italy, a place he had only known through the photographs in his schoolbooks: he
blamed his grandfather and his uncle for this, because they often used to
travel to Italian cities for work and would always sing the praises of the
beautiful places they had visited when they visited young Kyoji.
After
graduating from the University of Tokyo Zoukei and the Superior Institute of
Research at the Tokyo State University, he took a specialization diploma in
bronze casting at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts.
In 1984, he took yet another diploma at the Brera
Academy, under the tutelage of Enrico Manfrini and Alik Cavaliere. There
Nagatani became even more enthusiastic about bronze as a material, with all the
different and intrinsic casting methods, so that his choice of that particular
academic course turned out to be the best possible, as the two lecturers were
insuperable for their skill and cultural background, as well as being great
teachers with the ability to transmit the secrets of working with the alloy to
their students.
Works
These skills began emerging in Nagatani when the need
to develop his methodology led him to feel the urge to analyse and clarify the
meaning of his signs: this became the beginning of his need to question the
reasons and functions of art itself. In my opinion, his 1986 bronze work
entitled Changeable constitutes, in its completeness, the conceptual aspect of
the artist's linguistics. His sign became the force that acts in a field, whose
limits are the limits of its own influence. Three sides of this fine
rectangular slab of bronze are finished and squared off, while the right-hand
side is sinuous and rougher, left there (maybe) as a temporal premise, to offer
the possibility of a new sign, like a starting moment for logical continuity and
that each can undertake.
The linguistics of the sign in the work entitled Illogical is transformed
into splitting, lacerating, cleaning: it is the demonstration of the
incompatibility between the restricted sign and the space. By thus changing the
way in which the ambiguity of the dual space, of the outside and of the inside
of the material, is represented, the philological response matches the concept
perfectly. The artist's task is this above all. In fulfilling it, Nagatani
undertakes that ritual that does not represent the object, but reproduces it in
a different material, transposes it and consecrates it in a metaphysical
dimension: the tale, the allegory, the myth. Quite apart from illustrative
academicism, what we have here is the quest for the absolute in arguments for a
living thought exuded by the surfaces of objects before then descending into
the depth of being.
Meanwhile, a comparison between the bronze sculpture
entitled Throne of Silence, coloured with a dark patina and executed around
1998, and the earlier sculpture Illogical, created almost exactly ten years
before, reveals evidence of the evolution experienced by Nagatani. His skills
and the high degree of professional aptitude he acquired working constantly in
the foundry workshop have enabled him to dominate his material, making it
ductile even in his monumental works. This sculptured throne. whose dimensions
are quite significant, stands out for its technical execution and the finished
smoothness of the work - actually one of its fundamental qualities - going
well beyond the symbolic concept of the theme and making it a sine qua non for
the observer, to whom it offers the possibility of tactile perception. It is
worth remembering that this sculpture can actually be used by occupying it:
sitting in it and practising a meditative sit-in, while your hands flow over the
polished surface of the bronze and that contact is transformed into a pleasant
sensation of being protected, affectionate and embracing, as tender as the
sensation that mother's hands know how to transmit to her child (see Foreword).
Unquestionably in this work, religious fervour unites with a lofty sense
of harmony, with a direct sense of realisation, of the force of nature and of
the natural law that derives from it. The
breach, the gap
in the rock, the grotto, the
cave, the great crack, the ravine, the fissure, the cleft, the split, the
opening symbolically represents the place where we can take refuge and seek
protection, or withdraw in meditation and listen to the silent heartbeat of the universe. Yet it
must be remembered that, in the field of abstract painting, and especially with
regard to the current of sign and of gesture, Japan's artist internationalised
the Zen concepts of the void (sunija).
Mental representation combines ethical behaviour with
harmony, between the human being and nature: that is why Nagatani's work is
intimately related to ritual, as an authentically perceived way of living. Japan has always
expressed ethical values above all others in its art, the unconditional
surrender to Nature that regulates everything and to which everything returns.
"The Anima Mundi", a rather large work made in 2002 in bronze
with a burgundy patina, is crossed longitudinally by a great breach that breaks
(splits) its streamlined oval form, dividing it into section,;. an
upper one and a lower one, with different interpretative symbolisms linked to
the form: the shuttle - the shell - overlapping
hulls - or to a grain of corn, because of the groove, the most appropriate
shape for identifying with the Earth: grain as the universal source of
nourishment that, together with rice and Culture, gives rise to new life as it
germinates. In this work, the concept of void is used as an ethical value.
In his operative phase, Nagatani is not content with
merely marking a sign: he also activates it by forming a large split, an open
breach, without altering the predetermined concept of natural fissure. This act
gives the field an equally accurate dimension, which is that of space. The
artist can now operate inside the material (space) and reconstruct there the
symbols of the industrial archaeology that is founded on consumerism, which
so-called modern man leaves as the testimonial, the trace of his passing
(garbage).
So the elements of the sign, in the testimony left by modern man, become
indispensable for explaining the phenomenology of industrial production, even
though an industrial product is not, strictly speaking, an object,
because it does not identify the user as a subject, but is merely a unit in a
series, whose counterparts are a
series of users. Yet it does become a model, the testimony of a certain
technological development where the field is the area in which it is produced
and diffused, marking it with the proof of development.
It is this choice that Nagatani counters with his statement of the void
(sunija), of acting, that only the artist can practice and produce, for the very
reason that it cannot be traced back to an operation bound up with serial
production, but to a one-off piece.
Tale and Poetic
Over and above conception in the choices made by
the artist, his thinking hinges primarily on the pcetic element that acts in his
work and completes it in the spirit: "the
emblematic sculpture in the shape of a grain (of corn) will soon make its
content germinate and become an admonition for all those who are to come; it will be shown as the proof, it will
be presented as the sign, it will appear as now
tangible, it will last as a gesture, it will be preserved as a sign, and
all this will come forth from the Komb of Mother Earth. The nature of things is
fond of remaining concealed, especially in sculpture, welcoming within it the
non-visible and only showing the paradigmatic structure": (L.Q.B.)
It is often thought that the figurative arts - painting and sculpture -
represent space in `still' images and cannot have anything to do with time, i.e.
with the sequence of moments in which the affairs of man and of the world take
place.
It is evident that there is a substantial
underlying difference between the figurative arts and other arts, such as music
and theatre, in which products develop in a certain measurable timeframe. Yet in
many cases the figurative arts have tried to unite space and time. The cinema is
a fine example: here the use of images to represent space melds with the
sequence of timing that tells a story. In the figurative arts, many ideas have
been studied to be able to meld space and time, when artists have had to tackle
the problem of narrative. The sculptures listed here - Space in Silence, Home of
Time, Intuition of Time, Navigator of Time, Door of Hope and Return to Origin -
are different works with emblematic titles that challenge fate and are
dense with stupor at the secrets that govern nature: with the intelligence that
springs from the design idea throughout the process of casting, Kyoji Nagatani
has shown how to care for them, transforming them into a vigorous denial of the
problem.
In his bronze sculpture Door of the Wind, the
artist has configured the texturing in three different materials used by man in
the course of his history.
The pillar on the right shows worked and chipped
stone, with the abacus - grafted onto the capital - depicted in metal, with an
evident high tech look. Meanwhile, the pillar on the left is conical, rounded
and swollen like a wind-filled sail: its upper part ends with a flat forked joint, where the wooden (bronze)
beam rests, on which a shape that is smoothed (today) by the passage of time, by
the wind, rests unstably in space. Compared with the method of the past, the
high tech reveals and measures the passage of time by highlighting the
difference in technology. Motionless and monumental, the door stands like a
triumphal gate in space: an evocative void that cuts its space out of universal
space.
Nagatani
transfers to the sculpture Space in Silence all the symbols of ritual with
gesture. The theatre chosen to perform this ceremony as the proscenium is the
peak of a mountain, where the traces of footsteps, of hands and arms of man are
pressed into the soil where he has related to contemplative abstraction with his
gesturing.
This is that man who joins his hands to
sublimate the beauty of nature, drinking from her spring.
These are images where expressive harmony is
recharged and further enriched with moods and secret impulses. Now it is images
of this fundamental vision that Nagatani presents and proposes in his latest
works.
Images of art are always polyvalent, when they
encapsulate an authentic poetic yeast. One key of interpretation is never enough
on its own, sometimes more than one is needed to break the lock: the more the
meaning is concealed and hidden away behind the multiplication of facades of
allusion, the more keys will be needed. The surprising thing about Nagatani's
works is that their polyvalence of evocations and meanings is achieved with
expressive profundity. The character of his sculpture possesses a -formal
evidence that is sealed well within its plastic definition.
In this sense, a work like Return to the
Origin is actually exemplary.
Ancient, vague mythology is renewed here in the
desire to rediscover the identity of things lost, with natural truths of
bushido. With elegant matterism, the bronze becomes wood, its veining corroded
by the events of times past. Acting as a bridge,
it spans the gap between past and present. Set there as the limit of time is the
door, which marks the route, alluding to passage as a return to the past, while
the mass of stone - symbol of fullness - is lifted from its soil, leaving the
depression, the cavity of the void. Were the stone to be put back in its place,
it would be like a return to the origins of Nature.
It is the sequence in Kyoji Nagatani's theme
that come at us from the images in
this personal exhibition of his, a theme that was born and has grown together
with him and has been renewed in its continuity, the first sign of an
inexhaustible sign that is renewed without changing, and that is the most
certain sign of the artist. It is
in point of fact the sign of Nagatani.
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Dear
Nagatani
I
saw your exhibition in Milan (with catalogue and presentation by Luciano Caramel.
It interested me a great deal: obviously you keep in mind the formal artistic
tendencies in contemporary sculpture in Italy alongside Japanese tradition.
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Kyoji Nagatani's sculpture flourishes
artistically, and culturally, in two worlds, East and West, and from their
opposition he creates something of unique and delicate sensuality at their
interface. From his country of origin, Japan, he extracts an exquisite poetry of
form as compact and suggestive as a haiku. This aspect of his expression
encourages associations of intimacy and subjective discourse. His adopted home
in the West, on the other hand, has nourished more risky and dynamic elements:
surprising contrasts of crudity and refinment, and at times the ambition to
fashion monumental form modulated by a very ltalianate tradition of finely
crafted detail in highly polished bronze castings that recall the more elegant
passages of Arnaldo Pomodoro's large sculptures. Unlike Pomodoro, however,
Nagatani makes no attempt to embrace or comment upon machine forms or modern
technology as such, either visually or philosophically. At their root we feel
instead the profound and calming presence of landscape and a lyrical nature.
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Kyoji
Nagatani's beginning, in his native Japan was deeply influenced by Western
culture and Manzù holds a particular fascination for him. He first became
directly acquainted with the work at an Exhibition in Tokyo and adopted the
thematic and modelling styles he observed. Girls frozen into a single moment of
time, full of beauty and peace; surfaces and shapes transformed by quiet levity
of touch into breathing flesh, at the same time with the definitive permanence
endowed by metal. It was the potential offered by casting that fascinated
Nagatani during the subsequent years. Whilst
interest declined in highly descriptive images, a style too obsessed with detail
for people who - like he - were seeking to rediscover the exclusively Oriental
drive to give substance a form. Thus we see him transfer his attentions to
materials and ways of transforming them, after gaming his degrees at the Zoukei
University of Tokyo and the Research Institute at the State University in the
same city - specializing finally in bronze casting. This choice only appears reductive and should
not be interpreted merely from a mechanical, artisan aspect. To focus on a
febrile instant symbolizes a dedication to searching for matter's most
outstanding characteristics - form, irrespective of any anecdotal effusion - and
matter itself. In this
context, it is significant that on his first visit to Italy in 1979, Nagatani
entered the Academia Brera attending classes given by Manfrini, undisputed
expert on every aspect of actual sculpting and exceptional in revealing all the
tricks of the trade to his eager pupils. This was the experimental time of
casting “all'italiana”, of micro casting, casting in aluminium, some were
“'figurative” works, other were not, for reasons inherent in the formative
processes; there was also considerable disregard for stylistic aspects. So we
see him in the early '80s creating geometric structures inclining towards the
constructional, not by reasons of expressive preference, but exclusively because
of his research work on aluminium. He of course reached the point where
remaining an apprentice held little interest; the time soon came when the
mastery he had acquired was applied to creative purposes: to endow the invisible
with form if you will permit me to use an expression I particularly like.
Clearly, for Nagatani, in a direction deeply influenced by thought, by Oriental
spirituality. Gianfranco Bellora emphasized this point three years ago when
opening the artist's exhibition at the Studio Annunciata, referring to Zen
philosophy, to the fusion of spirit and form “to embody universal emblematic
concepts'” eliminating the “awareness of time” by the fusing together
“past and future in the eternal present of the illusory sublimation of
existence".
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