To create art that blends into the natural scenery and landscape, works of art that are part of everyday life; such has been the creative vision of Syoh Yoshida. He began his professional career as an artist in 2006. Upon holding his first solo exhibition, “Beautiful Thing”, he said, unequivocally, “ I would like for the audience to see my work not as a part of a picture but how it exists as part of a given space.” Since then, he has created a number of unique art works while always keeping in mind how his works can be viewed as a component of a given space.
His decision to become an artist was the inevitable consequence of his aesthetic growth. As a small child, he enjoyed frequent visits to museums with his parents. At age nine, when he saw the works of Uemura Shoen, famed for her exquisite Japanese paintings, he was inspired to become a part of the world of fine art. He insists that he wishes to create works that are not overly assertive but elegant, works that blend naturally with their surroundings yet maintain their distinct existence. Such creative vision stems from the impression made upon him by Shoen’s drawing of a woman standing with dignity.
Yoshida’s forte, which is realistic descriptions of a motif, is grounded in highly accomplished sketching skills that he has nurtured since an early age. He also creates an impressive volume of monochrome photographs to support his skills. To create photorealistic works, looking themselves almost like monochrome pictures with strong color contrasts, he uses traditional Japanese art materials. Deep mesmerizing black is drawn with calligraphy ink “Shoenboku (pine tree chips + carbon + graphite)”, Glittering white like a radiant emission of light is created with “Gofun (powdered chalk/clamshells/calcium carbonate)”. In recent years, he has collaborated with a young artisan of frame designs in order to create paper scrolls and folding screens with a modern touch while maintaining the traditional mounting style.
Yoshida has made “Revival of East Asian Ink “ his mission, which is why all of his works are monochromatic, although his primary creative form of expression is “painting” and is different from the traditional “drawing” style of art work prepared with ink. However, in both his painting style and the traditional drawing form, ink is the primary means of creation. These works reflect the modern aesthetics of an artist born in the ‘80s, while encapsulating the quintessential cultural “tradition.” In this sense, his works are organic fusions of tradition and contemporary.
Yoshida’s creative style is both contemporary and traditional-chic. Aesthetic philosophy consists of five elements; nature, installation (aesthetic use of space), tradition, respect, and quality. The beauty of controlled space that transcends time such as a traditional tatami room with old Japanese paintings on paper screens, items of superb craftsmanship, and furnishings is the source of Yoshida’s creative inspirations. People of the modern era can still fully enjoy the aesthetic beauty of the artistic installation at Buddhist temples and tea huts, established using perfected compositions and techniques.
Yoshida has been questioning the modern art scene where “Knowledge” takes precedence over “Aesthetics.” As such, he has been seeking to create works of art that reflect more primitive sensibilities such as Japanese regional cultural climates and life styles. In this manner, he explores ways to create works that can be viewed as “objects” in daily life. Inspired by nature and natural landscapes, he creates motifs of symbolic variations of his inspiration, expressing them in his controlled monotone world. Yoshida’ art proposes a way of life, an aesthetic use of space, that are the most essential elements that anyone might need. His motifs offer indispensable components to contemporary sustainable life styles and the modern art scene.
Nov. 2011.
Translated by Mayumi Yoshida
What is Beauty?
Text by Syoh Yoshida“Tatazumu”(to stand still) - i.e., to be fused with the environment
A perfected “object” is not overly assertive and is blended into the surrounding environment as part of the landscape.
What is “Art” ?
For artists, it is the pursuit of new beauty.
For viewers, it can enrich their lives and bring serenity to their minds.
In our daily lives, “objects” are created through our practical experiences.
Objects function as indispensable parts, or as inseparable elements, of architecture, and they silently speak out their “raison d’ être”.
In the beginning, objects have “function.” When their function is fulfilled, we pursue their “beauty.”
To focus solely on the pursuit of “beauty” may itself be called an innovative form of “beauty.” I think that the creation of new “beauty” through dialogues with one’s innermost self the “infinite quest for beauty, approached philosophically” - is “art.”
However, I believe that the quintessence of beauty is to be found in the “comprehensive designs” of everyday tools and furniture.
In Japan, from antiquity to the Edo period, “beauty” was found in the tools and objects we use in our everyday lives. The “artistic value” of such beauty existed in perfected “objects” insofar as they reflected our unique culture and style; it did not lie in the artist’s “message” or in the workmanship. We may find such “beauty” in the mlange of function and beauty, the perfect “artlessness” (the quality of being completely natural, with no artistic skills having been applied intentionally), represented in the brilliant design of a lacquer ware.
Such “object” transcends the realm of human craftsmanship and proclaims its existence, as though it has been there since the time immemorial.
Such is a totally different kind of provocativeness from what can be found in powerfully subjective contemporary art.
I think that the “beauty” of an “object” is embodied in the inorganic, emotionless character of crafts.
The value of “objects” is created out of the experiences of daily life. After all, “objects” should be viewed as part of daily life. The traditional Japanese aestheticism of “okuyukashii” (modest elegance, reserved and refined), “wabi” (plain and serene) and “sabi” (worn by the passage of time) blossomed during the Edo period after having been nurtured through thousands years of Japanese history. I think we can find the answer for the artistic “beauty” of workmanship in these aesthetic senses.
My concept of beauty may appear to be a stubborn and exaggerated reminiscence of the “good old days.” However, as we live in a time of a seamless and global world, I claim that, rather than seeking culture in old “objects,” we must find “tradition,” understood as the sublimation of culture, in newly created art.
© Syoh Yoshida, 2008.
Translated by Mayumi Yoshida
Like Suddenly Noticing That the Season Has Changed
Text by Chiho Sakai
When I spend time with students studying art in college, my heart sometimes goes out to them as it might to a lost child. This is because I often see how they hesitate as they try to decide how to approach the creation of art in today’s world, where new developments have broken down the barriers between different forms of art and many new techniques and types of art have been added to such old divisions as painting, design, and craft. The great task of the artist today is to freely express his or her ideas and concepts, and this is much harder than creating art under set conditions of technique or medium as in traditional drawing or modeling. In today’s art environment, surrounded by incredibly diverse examples of artwork, inundated by information on the techniques and materials that are possible means of expression, and confronted by endless choices, it is only natural that art students should be bewildered and not know what to do with so much freedom.
Not just the students but all of us live in the sea of information pouring from the many forms of mass media around us and causing us to lose our grasp of reality. I sometimes feel sorry for young people because it is almost inevitable that they will find it difficult to find a focus for their artistic expression. Where should they turn? What should they do? It takes them a great deal of time to determine their direction as the possibilities of expression they are offered continue to expand and proliferate, keeping them turning this way and that. Because I often see young people who are confused, drifting like small boats tossed on the waves of the open sea, Sho Yoshida stands out as quite a different kind of young artist.
I am not sure if I ever saw him while he was still in school. It was not until I visited the studio where he works recently that I found that he spends most of everyday in the studio and has a very calm and steady personality in spite of his youth. I believe that this serious attitude has made it possible for him to maintain focus in his artistic expression.
When I first visited Yoshida’s studio, I saw a number of books of reproductions of Japanese-style paintings on the desk where his art materials and brushes were neatly arranged. He showed me catalogues of exhibitions by Uemura Shoen and Ito Shoha that he had seen as an elementary school student, explaining how he had been captivated by the beauty of the female figures in their paintings, especially the glowing, finely textured, translucent skin and hair. He told me what a vivid and moving experience it had been to see these paintings in the space of the museum at the time and how this had an important effect on his creative work.
He greatly enjoyed making copies of the paintings he actually saw as a young boy and tried to paint the same images as realistically as possible. Seeing transparent things expressed transparently had a tremendous emotional effect on him, and his current work is based on this early experience. The objects he paints are momentary fragments of landscapes that he has actually seen.
His paintings are composed with only two tones, black and white. With these limited colors, he paints night scenes with lights glowing in faraway houses and transparent drops of water that seem to be on the verge of falling. He captures moments of perception of invisible things, such as flowing water and air or particles floating in the air, transferring these phenomena to the canvas just as they are and revealing the beauty of these ephemeral moments.
Yoshida uses a glossy pine-soot black and also creates a matte black by erasing. His blacks are endlessly flat and do not show shadows or depth, but one can see a slightly blue translucence emanating from the thinly applied layers. Looking at his paintings, one experiences a moment when a white motif suddenly rises out of the pure darkness. This effect, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of his work, is based on the special qualities of the media he uses, the media of Japanese-style painting.
Looking at Yoshida’s paintings, I suddenly think of words spoken by a mentor long ago: “Looking at the whole means to close your eyes. Looking at everything is the same as looking at nothing.” Our eyes always try to divide the things we see into figure and ground. The form that becomes the focus of attention pushes everything else into the background so that the things outside of it become ground and appear hazy and indistinct.
In spite of this tendency of vision, the darkness that Yoshida paints entirely in black, which might be described as a world of nothingness, is clearly not what it seems. Certainly, when we move closer or pull back, changing the angle or distance of vision, as when looking through the viewfinder of a camera to focus a picture, the flowers depicted in the painting or the effects of light change and take on a rich variety of appearances. At the same time, however, the forms of images painted with glittering white gofun pigment create a sense of space, extending back into the depths that envelop them in the flat darkness that would ordinarily be relegated to the background. Rather than describing this as a sense of spatial depth, it would be more fitting to say that we are shown an infinite flow of time with a lyrical quality that appears suddenly in a world of darkness. We sense a misty atmosphere that is like transparent particles in space.
Yoshida is constantly concerned with the issue of nihonga (Traditional Japanese-style painting) in his art. He thinks about the intricately combined temporal factors of style, culture, and historical periods of art as well the techniques and materials that differ from those of Western-style oil painting, and pays special attention to the word nihonga itself, a word that cannot be simply defined or described. What is nihonga? This form of art is at the foundation of Yoshida’s creative work, but he does not recognize most of the individual works of art that are referred to by this word today as true nihonga. He sees them as something completely different from the paintings cultivated historically in traditional schools like the Hasegawa-ha or Kano-ha. In his strict definition, nihonga is identified with the process by which ancient traditions are transmitted in the context of Japanese culture, the role of artists and techniques developed in a master and disciple relationship, and the individual development of creativity and sublimation of expression on the basis of tradition. Although he loves and respects this historical development of Japanese-style painting, he rejects the classification of his own work as nihonga simply because of the materials and techniques he uses. His attitude is marvelously sincere, very critical of the artists of his own time and strictly honest in questioning the meaning of nihonga.
So what does he think of his own work in relation to present circumstances?
“I want to make paintings that are unified with the space and the air of the place, as if it were as natural for them to be in someone’s living space as the chairs and tables that are used every day.” When I first visited the place where he works, I felt that this very causal statement, spoken so simply that it might have failed to attract notice, directly conveyed the ideas and values that he emphasizes in his work, leading toward something profound.
In describing his work, we might use the Japanese phrase, ki no okenai, meaning that it does not force itself into our awareness. We do not ordinarily problematize the existence of things in our immediate surroundings. It would be impossible to live with an awareness of all the meanings of things that exist. In the field of design, this is an important issue, since it is desirable to design things so that they fit into and function in a living space without our being aware of them. In everyday life, indispensible tools and techniques must function without people being aware of them every time they pick them up. Works of art, however, transcend everyday life through deliberate human acts that make them different from practical tools and techniques. They are separated from the hand and observed from a distance. The freed imagination and beauty that the artist puts into his or her paintings is quietly contemplated. I believe that the attitude advocated by Yoshida appears clearly in his art. He puts effects of softly flowing air into it that do not enter conscious awareness but blend in with other phenomena that we experience in present time such as real light or mist. These effects are casual and subtle, so that the viewer becomes aware of them at an unexpected moment, as if suddenly noticing that the transition from one season to the next has already taken place. Yoshida’s captivating paintings are remarkable for their temporal boldness and spatial fragility and their lack of ostentation. He will undoubtedly continue to develop these qualities, and I have great expectations of this young artist.
© Chiho Sakai, 2007.
Chiho Sakai is a Japanese art critic who has published numerous articles in art magazines such as "Art iT" and "Bijutsu Techo" .
First Published in "SYOH YOSHIDA", Printed privately, 2007.
Translated by Stanley N. Anderson
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© SYOH YOSHIDA