2003 Galerie SOL,Tokyo

Penetrating Paintings: Pierced Surface, Middle Layer, and Depths

                       Akatsu Tadashi, Art critic, ex-reporter for Asahi Shimbun

Suganuma Minoru has changed, evolved, and deepened. He has pioneered a new horizon of painting. This is the feeling I have had since I saw his latest gigantic work "Penetration I". The painting is his overwhelming expression itself and never lets us take our eyes off. The multi-layered colour distinctions that contain diverse expressions and the close balance expressed by such distinctions together show dynamism in his work and make us strongly feel its attractiveness. An act of his free hands that are released from pressure expands the space and invites the sense of being free. The red colour moving forward and backward in our retinas eventually repeats its expansion and contraction movements in the whole space. His extraordinary powerful and magnanimous expressions infinitely multiply the image, expanding the sense of infinity of floating.
A pebble is thrown into a lake. Ripples spread concentrically from the point of its fall. At the same time, as the pebble falls in the lake water, a reverse conical accumulation will be formed. The ripples on the lake surface might be the expression of the paintings' impact and image that come into our retinas, and the shapes below the surface might be the masterpiece of the quantity, quality and depth of memories, history, and the spirit of the age, which Suganuma has perceived and experienced. These things came to my mind while I was totally attracted by his latest work.

 


What Suganuma reminds us is clear paintings in which lines are drawn with vermilion touches and a floating network is manifested. Where does his change come from? Suganuma has sincerely kept on questioning fundamental conditions of seeing and painting without focusing too much on models or customs. One turning point for him was his study in Spain as a trainee of Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2001. He desperately wanted to continue standing at a place where painting was born and brought up. In Spain, he seems to have expelled and abstracted many of painting theories while he was creating his works. At the same time, he read literatures of Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, visited the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp site in Oranienburg, near Berlin. Suganuma reminisces, "I identified my past existence as an outsider in Auschwitz with that as a person who has been there through my memory. I relieved the pains of the Jews with my whole body, which are also my pains. There, I felt the original meaning of production, or the existence of myself as the only person who is relieved through expression”. There, he got an image that excited his unknown perceptive experience and heightened it to his thought and philosophy.
 His memorandum written in December 1999, which had not been released, says, “I take cluster amaryllises as a door to heaven, imagine various thoughts penetrating the door, imagine mirrors reflecting the film of the water surface and struggles of life and death below the surface, and think about paintings that go between heaven and earth”. Then, he concludes, “They(in Auschwitz)penetrate me as a membrane”.
Suganuma has established his thought and sense of history through his sharp insight, and obtained his sure skill and action to keep his expressions vivid. He spread a wall canvas on the floor and jumped into the picture to paint it with his whole body. He used a cloth to spread colours. He also used his hands to paint. Various colours were being accumulated on the canvas gradually. The painting was created as a product of his bodily action. Probably as a result of this, eyes pierce the surface, middle layer, and depths of the multi-layered painting. The "surface" is to expand a colour image; the "middle layer" is to penetrate the space; and the "depths" are to pierce the projection image of his everyday life as an individual, which is guided from his memory, history, and spirit of the age. These three layers are generated and developed from the point where everything has been dismantled.
Suganuma Minoru is an artist who has pioneered the horizon of painting, whom I would like to keep focusing on.



2006 Galerie SOL, Tokyo

Light and Object

DEHARA Hitoshi
Hyougo prefctural Museum of Art, Curator

           Once this great work of Suganuma Minoru comes before our eyes, it makes us feel like watching something like an organ enlarged from its inside or being inside of it. His work has a little declining shadow running vertically in the center, making two curved surfaces come up limitlessly. However, the composition of its shape is indistinct as a whole. Its center looks like emitting low light while its periphery is a little dark.

           Three or four years have passed since Suganuma shifted from the “Paraphrase” series of works to those of “Penetration”. More than 60 works have been produced during the period. Now, space and shapes have been reduced to a state close to a surface, despite folds being intertwined, through the process from a two-layer structure of the former to a screen at the initial stage of the latter, in which several patches of images are juxtaposed with once another. “Penetration” originally means “going inside”. The inside exists as the outside does, and a border lies between them. In this series, the border is placed parallel to the screen, that is, on the front. Needless to say, there is a kind of bias or delay in the border when an object enters. Here, light leaks out of something like a film, leading to a mixture or intertwining of light and an object.

           Painting itself is an object for sure. Suganuma is conscious of this and struggles with paints, using his hands (and hand gloves) and cloths. The “Penetration” series seems to strongly remind us of a material sense with its red color, although it also has some works mainly using yellow. On the other hand, light itself is ultimate in illusion in painting. Painting expresses brightness stronger than chromatic values.

 

           However, what makes it possible is not only a conversion of a color at the light but also the composition of the whole screen. The whole color has to be perceived as a certain image. It is worth remembering that the system of light and shadow was developed slightly after the heyday of Western paintings, which spanned from the Renaissance to the Baroque, and the three-dimensional illusion system. We are living in the time when light of paintings speaks for itself, but a color was nothing other than a color before the heyday, although there were some exceptions. In other words, a light and shadow illusion is established on the base of a deep illusion space and consciousness toward the space.

           In these Suganuma’s works, guttering of paints and the texture showing a sign of cloths and hands (and hand gloves) are easily visible, making us confirm that he maintains material planarity. However, on the other hand, a certain image emerges in the illusion space, although abstract. The image is free from a surface as a given material. Painting is not a mere two-dimensional art or three-dimensional illusion, as seen in the materiality and the emergence of an image therefrom. His works are as close to two dimension as possible on one hand, but it is possibly an art as experience, in which two dimension and illusionary three dimension are intricately added with each other on the other hand. Thus, his works generate light as value.

           Suganuma has shifted to the current method of laminating colors in this series from a stain method or that of using translucency of colors. This is seemingly because he tried to change the relations between the materiality and image of paints. The low light actually comes from a white color that mainly forms the front layer. The light is quietly emitted like a miracle from the state that a material has been transmigrated to an image somewhere.

           It may be said that the “Penetration” series is a self-referential painting in a sense to expose its essence. However, this is based on the point that paintings contain something transcending a self like light by nature. A shoji, sliding paper door, transmits light like the film of his painting, beyond which darkness still exists. Like this, space beyond the border is just something suggested. His light exists in the transcedence. I am sure that, while at least continuing self-examination, Suganuma is trying to track back the (mainly Western) history of paintings again, although I am not sure if he may be regarded as modernist. He points to the axis of history of the past, present and future in the structure of this series because of his orientation to the history of paintings themselves. On the other hand, it seems that his stance is linked to the point that the nature of human beings is transcendence. “Penetration” is an analogon, a Greek word meaning analogy, of human beings or their bodies, as well as of paintings. Therefore, it can even stitch them together.




2007 Galerie SOL, Tokyo

To the joy of light

　Works of Minoru Suganuma may be placed as abstract, however they are concrete to me. That gentle undulations in his color paintings of a same color system acts in concert with the feeling of the viewers and gives the sense of flesh, just like the way we feel a breeze with our skin. The title of his works,　“Penetration” is a word with ambiguity and has the meaning of permeation, passing through, breaking through, insight and even the insertion of the sexual organs. When the artists title their works, we need to be cautious not to think their titles describe their works as they express indescribable words within their work.

The waves advance swelling from inside of Suganuma’s painting (from its outer skin or outer layer) is different from ideology; rather the waves saturate each drama of our undulated feeling and repeatedly match with our heartbeat and breathing. Some of the colors of his works seem to be repeating just to confirm the changes that remind us of our present time and space. His works are not ruled by one prominent color only, rather layers of paints and various colors express the artist’s emotions  as if swelling up to the surface of his work.

At times those colors are vivid and they can represent the events of our time.　At the moment I saw his work titled　“Penetration 62” in Jan.,2006, it reminded me of the sight of naked Iraqi soldiers who were captives of Americans during the Iraqi war.

It was surprising to see the materialness and its close resemblance to this mass of flesh deprived of all humanity in the work of Suganuma. The prominent color of the works are reds, they remind us slightly of the touch as well as the shade of our skin and flesh although it might be only me who thinks it to be so.  When the artist made these works, I wonder if he thought about it.　But I am sure of the　expression　that becomes the mirror of the world we face.　　

 

 His work this time where yellow is the predominant color is different from his previous one called “Penetration”. The element of mortals is wiped away and changed into the expression of spiritually high. Crystal yellow, cadmium yellow, Indian yellow and Nickel yellow are multilayered and show their depth. Interchange of purified light and divine things that are liberated from the objectivity of our body.  “Let there be light,” and there was light. So it is stated in the Bible. Light in his paintings blows up to the surface just like the way it was first created in Genesis. In his paintings, there is a cave-in of light, a whirlpool of light which is rolled up in light, uneasiness of light, light which is washed away and chaos of light. When you take a good look at his light, there is no stagnation even for a moment of yellow. The color flows implying the materialness of water that changes in sequence. Light swallows all, chews all, ceases to exist and regenerates. A banquet of colors in Suganuma’s painting, a mystery wavers that reminds me of Greek gnosis thought that enables mysterious syncretism with the person and God. 

Suganuma may start dreaming of the world as genesis.
To the joy of the day people awoke to the beauty of light and its miraculous power for the first time.

Mikio Yagi (a poet)




2009 Galerie SOL, Tokyo

From Auschwitz to Delft.

I went to see the Documenta of Kassel in summer 2002. But my impression of the exposition has changed drastically when I went to Sachsenhausen. The concentration camp, the suburbs of north Berlin, was a place where medical experiments on human bodies were performed during WWⅡ. My memory is still vivid because of the cruelty humans are able to do to each other. Eight years passed since I visited the concentration camp and I still am affected by what happened there. I still have to come to terms with that part of history.

 

We visited Auschwitz on the 27th of July 2009. It was a nice and dry morning. After visiting Sachsenhausen and being aware of the suffering imposed on humans there, I asked myself whether it was worth to continue to painting. I felt that compared to what I saw there my work is but a very small contribution to this world. However the joy I feel doing my work gives me the strength to continue. After experiencing the negative heritage for humans, I wondered and ask myself what can be left for us to be positive.. knowing my self-intoxication for the thought..

We moved to Birkenau in the afternoon. It is only a short time by bus from Auschwitz. There are still some barracks standing in spite of the destruction caused by the war.　We passed through the arch made famous by the movie “Schindler’s list”. On the arch, there is a writing which says ‘when you enter this arch, your exit only as smoke’. The trains of death all passed through this arch. We finished the tour and returned to Cracow at three pm. I regret this is the place where Theodor Adorno said, “It is cruel to write the poetry after Auschwitz ” . ("Cultural Criticism and Society"1951). The site did not affect me as much. (though of course it depends on the feeling we see it.)

 

I started drawing on the 9th of August, the last day at the 5th World Art Symposium in Delft. Anyway, I started by putting the paper on the rough surface, rubbed the pencil on the paper in order to draw the texture of concrete. I realized that there was no need to draw a form. I left the atlier and used the same procedure on bricks, asphalt, woodskin and other materials. As the frottage grew I realized that the representation of something was created, but my pencils had expressed something entirely different. I returned to atlier and erased again all I did until nothing was left, but stained paper. I continued to erase and ask myself whether I could continue to draw. Then, suddenly, the sentence “from Auschwitz to Delft” came to my mind. This only is my own experience. But then, painting is also only a personal experience after all. The theme; Is it possible to paint after Auschwitz ? I have not found the answer yet. However I might be able to paint because my hand is moving. Therefore in the end I understood that ： thinking and to act are not necessary the same.(26th Aug, 2009)






2010 Galerie SOL, Tokyo

A memorized image and an abstraction.
Minoru Suganuma

An image of form stocks gradually in memory during in human’s infancy. When the stock of memory gets to limit, suddenly we realize the forms surrounding us. At our first perception of forms, we will get the clear figure in our head, and refuse the vague image. That is to say, we acknowledge shapes and understand them this way. We recognize them with our eyes and it seems to be done with pleasure. Human’s age is in direct proportion with amounts of memory.

 However, it is useless if only memory increases aimlessly. In fact, a significance of memory will be concrete with making it to revive, scratch, and dim. An accumulation of memory has to appear by filtering and arranging memory’s elements by artist. In other words, the vague memory is born through the process like an evolution and an aging.

We can say same thing about the color. Though we can see all those images today, to tell the truth, there is an effect that we have been getting it with time. It is not presented by nature. Human’s perception of image is monochrome at the beginning. Then we received it by the combination of language and materials step by step. Moreover, an individual sense of colors will also be considered that has been influenced by the environment and the historical background. For example, Japanese has the monochrome world of ink painting as a sense of beauty in their memory; they are greatly associated with its history and the climate. In addition to this sense, today’s optical colors provide us the image, video or computer graphics with the technological innovation. It changes the quality of our color sense. Digital colors will be added to our color sense in near future.

 

For example, applying all my theory to colors, what do pink colors mean to us? Not only we appreciate that the color has universal special quality and flavor of cause, but also we are stimulated with the color of its memories and flavor sewed by our experience. An essential source of our memory is so deep and long distanced. When you will sort the memories out by centrifuge, in the end you will get the essence or something left out. When I create my work, then dogmatically I have to face to the surfaced image as well as afterimage and also floating image in between the spaces of two other images that resembles to the dark and vague talk of deep distant past.  If there is a beauty, I suppose it appears within them.







2011 Galerie SOL, Tokyo

Unlimited  sky
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Hitoshi Dehara　

The curator, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art

It is interesting to know that Minoru Suganuma titled his exposition “Sora (Sky)”.The title does not imply a visual analogy between the painting and the sky. Rather, I feel that the title “Sky” seems to imply unlimited freedom for his paintings.
When I saw his principal work for the exposition, it is clear that his paintings were not painted according to some regulations or definition. On the other hand, the paintings do not express the artist’s memory, nor his feelings. I feel that his paintings are free of elements that are not necessary to create paintings, and there are no restrictions.
In addition to it, there is no expression of reappearance of any kind on his paintings. Several years ago, I wrote an essay for his exposition, titled “Penetration” and a series of those paintings were abstract. They look just as if they were skins penetrated by light and we could see the analogy. However, since then, Suganuma restrained the effects of light gradually, and his paintings are tending to emphasize reducibility more and more. After adding strokes of lighter colors on the darker ones and using it as an undercoat we can see that the principal paintings at this exposition have shades. This shadow does not imply light, but more likely, implies nuances of colors. Otherwise I can say that, the “deepness” in space expressed in his paintings as an extended metaphor. I guess that creating these special nuances shows the particular creativity of Suganuma’s paintings.
At a glance, his paintings seem to be simple and anonymous, there is no doubt he creates his work by balancing his experience and techniques to control all the elements in regard to colors, forms and action. Thus, his paintings are anchored in the space of illusion between reappearance of itself and reappearance of others.
The freedom of this “Sora (Sky)” is, therefore, freedom based on suppression and moderation, or  the freedom accompanied by a total loss of liberty just like two sides of a coin.

 


Related to this, I would like to point out that Suganuma’s smaller works that were painted virtually simultaneously with his big piece vary widely in regard to basic elements such as arrangements of colors and directions of strokes. However, it does not mean that I imply visual analogy even if his work reminds me of changing sky. My interest goes to the fact that all of his paintings are interrelated. Suganuma suppresses unnecessary expressions in each of his work and it seems he tries to balance all this with versatility in his work. I think that there might be different meanings for this interrelations.
Perhaps there might be a base in Suganuma's current paintings that expresses freedom based on suppression and freedom of diversity.