AMABIKI VILLAGE AND SCULPTURE
Works of TODA Yusuke
updated: may 30, 2011
CAREER AND WORKS
AMABIKI 2011 / TODA Yusuke
- Sharing an evanescent time / Land marks to Rocky Flats from Los Alamos
- Steel, Sisal hemp rope
L:180×160×500 (h)cm
R:150×140×510 (h)cm
Installation area flexible
- If you carefully look around the grounds of the Takaku Shrine, there are so many kinds of secondary shrines, large and small. They probably enshrine local deities, but I was told that nobody now knows when they were built, or why. What's more, the fact that I created my sculpture here is one more thing that will vanish from human memory. At least, I want to share transient and precious time with our contemporaries.
AMABIKI 2008 / TODA Yusuke
- Oracle under the trees
- Steel, Stone (andesite) and Others
200×240×640 (h)cm
- In Nishikata Park, I discovered a tree shadow that was out of balance with its surroundings, making a wild impression. On the ground, rusty metal fragments and concrete chunks protruded.
But the trees I looked up at were stirred in spring by pleasant breezes through their new leaves, the light dapples through them in summer, and their falling leaves dance slowly down in autumn.
I wanted to link the sublime waiting above with the ground.
AMABIKI 2006 / TODA Yusuke
- The J. Letzel's oval in a peaceful site
- Hon-komatsu andesite, Synthetic rubber, Steel, Wood, Plant seeds, Pieces of old books
180×300×360 (h)cm
- If you stand on the edge of the hill, where pottery fragments of the Jomon period have been unearthed, a scenery of terraced hills that interweaves humanity and nature spreads before you. What did people of the distant past see from this place?
Stuffing the interior of the elliptical ring thickness with full of plant seeds and pieces of paper from a Japanese text on local topography written in the early eighth century. I offered up the sculpture with only the weight of the natural stone at the edge of a barley field. By linking a simple form to the place it stands in, I wanted to call forth the animistic life force that is hidden in the soil.
THE FIFTH AMABIKI VILLAGE AND SCULPTURE / TODA Yusuke
- Latent Spirits of Trees In The Village
- Wood, Stainless steel, Manila-hemp rope, Carbon steel
120×120×400 cm 2500 kg
120×490×145 cm 2200 kg
Installation size changeable
- The day I first visited this place, I felt it was an isolated space, despite the bright and open lie of the land. Standing on a road between fallow fields and a bamboo grove, I noticed that all I could see in the distance were the mountains far beyond, and the blue sky. In that moment I had an intense illusion of being surrounded by these cultivated hillsides. I thought "I want to make sculptures here".
THE FOURTH AMABIKI VILLAGE AND SCULPTURE / TODA Yusuke
- "In a gap in the flow in May"
- Deserted boat, FRP, Paint, Cloth, Steel, Stainless steel
350×160×320 cm
250 kg
- Until now, I've kept on making big, heavy sculptures for a long time. In a way, that is my taste, but it's also the way I work. Nevertheless, it may not be necessary to have size and massive presence to cover some of the themes of my work, which are "Things that can't be captured in a photo or drawn in a picture", "Things that can't be created from a concept alone" and "Things which change the atmosphere of the of the place they stand in". So, for the last five years I've been working simultaneously on very small pieces and pieces which aggressively engage the gallery space. What I'm trying this time at Amabiki Village is of the latter type. I have a renewed sense of the pleasure of feeling and thinking about site-specific "pieces which can only be done here and now".