Labyrinth
At a former nunnery in London, in the Galleria di Vittorio Emanuele II
in Milan filled with tourists from all over the world, or in an underground
station in Kwangju, Korea. These are places where peopleﾕs lives have
been inscribed through prayer in days past as well as through daily activities
in the present. These sites, seen as the interior spaces of an architecture
or as an exterior ground, where Motoi Yamamoto has drawn labyrinths with
salt entitled "Labyrinth," have shifted from private spaces
such as the gallery space to more public spaces. Employing tons of salt,
the labyrinths composed of fine patterns resemble the rock garden of Ryoan-Ji
temple in Kyoto or a Tibetan mandala drawn with sand. The structures are
varied, from one which filled 24? with a mass of salt as a backdrop through
10 hours of work per day over 4 days to a piece in the open space of the
Galleria involving leaking raindrops in the pattern of the work. The work
is represented through these different structures and appearances depending
on the spaces where they appear, transforming any site into a calm ritualistic
space.
Yamamoto's creativity coincided with his personal experience of his younger
sister's death through brain cancer. Since then, he has worked with salt,
which seems to be indispensable in the death customs and culture of Japan,
as seen in various death ceremonies and is the principle material implying
the meaning of death. Drawing patterns with salt is, for the artist, like
a voyage to the heart of memories that are fading away and transforming
from time to time. No one, including the artist, can control the process
of drawing, for the line is often affected by the working circumstances
or climate (such as rough surfaces or humidity), in addition to his physical
and mental conditions. Therefore often there are lines and corners which
are not intended by the artist but realized through the entanglements
of chance and inevitability. Finishing the process and reaffirming the
difficulties in trying to approach the ultimate source of his memories,
Yamamoto's gaze silently traces back to the origin of the labyrinth as
if confirming "the distance between death and himself".
The more he moves out to different stages and creates labyrinths in bigger
scales, and the greater the memories of human existence beyond time and
space which they contain, the more the salt, which was used for his personal
reasons in the beginning, comes to be perceived as something representing
the trace of all lives in the universe as if it were sublimated to a cosmological
model wrapping all the memories of past and existing lives while acquiring
an autonomous sense as an artwork and reinforcing its existential meanings.
In other words, it could be fair to say that the salt, which Yamamoto
employs as the material that bears what he calls the "memories of
the creatures," could be seen as something connecting all the memories
of countless numbers of lives, and the labyrinth renders itself as a kind
of proto-type which lets those memories circulate. "Labyrinth"
evokes an imperative truth for humankind that is also an annihilation
of living creatures; paradoxically, but vividly, it lets us be aware of
life. The labyrinth of life with its alluring transparency inspires and
engenders an energy to flow towards viewers' bodies, releasing a positive
aura.
Independent Curator
Naoko Usuki
