Where Colorants and Supports Encounter

Suganuma Minoru has recently returned to “staining”. For this, he dared to deviate from his achievement of a complex multilayered screen, which is in other words a screen to be paraphrased.
Until then, Suganuma had created screen-like screens by adding contrasts of complementary colours, such as swells of multiple layers generated with colorants of oil paint and agglomeration of folded lines. Dark layers created with a squeegee and depths of ambiguous visual image we glimpse between the folded lines emphasized with a vivid countenance, these are being integrated so as to follow their own orders and “paraphrased” into various modes. In 2001, he regarded such modality of convergence as performance of “one style”, and it could be his exclusive achievement.
However, in general, it is still unclear whether something amplified from feelings of each visitor and that amplified from his own really correspond with each other, even if the visitors can see his way of expression on his screen. Nevertheless, it will be possible also for them to see the above-described visual conditions as they are, and it will be possible for us to judge such visual structures as his method of expression. Actually, he has completed his screens reflecting the structures and gradually improved their accuracy.
However, Suganuma’s implementation and method of integration, which are to directly face his screen through media instead of drawing something, have never been possible without his self-questioning about material conditions of the method of the medium called painting. Even the medium is a material that inevitably deviates from our ideas, or our surroundings. To return to the action that the medium influences his perception, confirm it, and find out a certain shape in these practices. Such circumstances will be what he has faced since 2002 when he dared to diverge from one “style” he had already established. Then, he had no choice but to return to the base where a material was going to deviate, that is, colorants and supports are directly related with each other as a result of the “paraphrase” and exclusion of the shape of the extended integration.
It is eyes turned to the screen from outside or reality in everyday life that lead such return to the inevitability of principle. It will be nothing other than redefinition of various conditions to commit oneself to the screen that obliges the artist. Therefore, the principle of activities derived from the redefinition will become a window into perceptional strength in the screen to come, which will even take on a kind of philosophy.  At least, such practices should always be repeated regardless of a stream of the times. We accept Jackson Pollock’s “Dripping” and Morris Louis’s “Staining” due to this, rather than full acceptance of historical myths.
It was after Suganuma’s stay in Spain when he dared to deviate from multi-layered screens he had prepared till that time and was influenced by the structure that media themselves created. Nobody knows what kind of change took place in his mind during that process. However, is this transformation called “penetration” to demand Sartre’s “Physical Analogon” in the screen, which is identical with Suganuma’s passion for Auschwitz and Adorno? In other words, does the transformation represent what he has in his mind? Rather, it seems to have stood for return to an obvious suggestion of the base in which colorants and supports are related with each other. Actually, his certain experience overseas might encourage him to change in such a way. If so, this transformation will never be able to help containing reasonable principle.
Dispersion of colorants on a canvas spread on the floor (Suganuma calls this “lights from a painting”) is confirmed, and an epiphany of a certain circumstance is awaited. This is helped by hands, cloths and brushes, and oil working as a medium is washed, is wiped and penetrates. Red, and sometimes yellow and green tangle with dark colour layers to push the surroundings, generating bags. Paints are spread and exposed, their reservoirs are gathered to create frames, and brushes are used to draw. Colour saturation is vaguely shown between high and low values. Thus, in general, the screen is full of will for non-uniformity and anti-integration. However, such principle of the self-directive screen does not appear unless we patiently wait for the time when it is obviously structured. In other words, the screen may be just a mere one. The tension involved in Suganuma’s works also derives from this fact.
In the meantime, “staining” and “penetration” that relies on perception effects of the former appeal more to the perception only when their self-structuring comes to shape in thorough anti-integration and anti-order in the relations between media and supports. In this case, the screen will literally “penetrate” into others’ minds and bodies. Then, the “deviation” of materials on the screen becomes minimal between the painter and the audience in principle. However, it is not very usual that such blunt structuring of the screen sufficiently performs so-called “sharpness” of the anti-order style. Among his recent works, I have just seen such sharpness be well-exerted in his relatively small works having brilliantly skilful painting rather than his foggy works. He is still in the turmoil in search of it. Or, he will be doing so for paintings to come.
When some overlap his works as such with those of Matsumoto Yoko, the former are different from the latter that symbolize her rather consistent integration of visual images.

Hirai Ryoichi, Art critic