Nomura Art Award Winners Special Exhibition

aaploit presents a special two-day exhibition commemorating Uematsu Mizuki's receipt of the Nomura Art Prize. Uematsu completed the doctoral program in sculpture at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Uematsu creates sculptural works using paper. The work she presented at her doctoral examination exhibition at Tokyo University of the Arts demonstrated an overwhelming presence.

This exhibition presents two new works.

Artist Statement

The act of soaking paper in water gave me a sense of something floral, and I began to think about creating the energy involved in the birth of a single petal. The title was decided from the image of a flower opening under solar energy. For the ink colors, I chose blue for the sky and red for the sun.

I filled a pad large enough to hold the paper with blue ink, dyed the entire sheet, dropped red ink with a pipette, then submerged it again in blue ink, creating mixed colors while retaining lines of red. Through repetition, a wide range of purples emerged. I selected a watercolor paper with surface water resistance that does not allow ink to penetrate to the core, so that white remains visible at the cut edges. The continuous act of cutting into the paper is itself an accumulation of the time spent engaging with the material. The immersion I experience when my breathing synchronizes with the work is also a time in which I re-examine the existence of "myself." Such continuous acts measure the distance to what cannot be seen, and express the "light" that appears there as sculpture.

To make use of the white at the cut edges, I glued sheets into cylindrical forms and raised them upright. Using these as cores, I shaped the work following the flow created by the paper surfaces. When ink permeates paper, it enters the fine porous structure within—the spaces of air inside the paper. Ink and air connect, and air that could not be seen becomes visible.

In this way, what was actually inside the material—invisible—becomes manifest.

At a certain point, I felt that the act of soaking paper in ink resembled giving water to a plant. Paper, a standardized ready-made product, fixes vast spans of time itself through the color changes produced by the osmotic pressure of ink. Like leaves and vines extending toward what lies ahead, it evokes time yet to come, and will remain—as a flower blooms.

For inquiries regarding the exhibition and works, please contact info@aaploit.com.