What rises

I say: a flower! And, out of the oblivion where my voice casts every contour, insofar as it is something other than the known bloom, there arises, musically, the very idea in its mellowness; in other words, what is absent from every bouquet. In the poem, Divagations (1897), Mallarmé seeks within language that which escapes it — the essence of things — beyond their name. In Amano Yasushi’s work, presences rise. Not with words — with clay, fire. Amano is 28 years old. He lives and works in Iga, in the Mie prefecture. Originally from Hiroshima, he studied ceramics at the Kyoto City University of Arts. In Japan, ceramics is a major art form. In 1948, during the reconstruction of both Japan’s economy and identity, the Sōdeisha movement, founded in Kyoto, marked a radical rupture, making the case for a ceramic art freed from all function, liberated from the utilitarian, and turned towards formal experimentation. The figurative work of Amano, anchored in the human body, continues in the spirit of this movement. What he makes is sculpture. Clay is his medium – not his identity. The technique he uses is called te-bineri. Coils of clay are layered one on top of the other, allowing the form to rise from the bottom to the top, enveloping the air. It is through this gesture, constructing around the void, that Amano not only thinks about form, but about existence itself. He evokes the image of the Four Celestial Kings in the oldest Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Tōji. A fire, almost a century ago, calcified them. Their limbs disappeared, their surface eroded. Clothing and flesh have become one – only a raw, elementary mass remains, irreducibly human. This is what Amano calls the “form of existence.” In the garage converted into a studio next to his house in Iga, the historical city of ninjas, as Amano reminded us during our visit, the sculptures live alongside with the most ordinary of everyday objects – boxes, a cup of coffee, light that filters through the cracks in the ceiling. This is where forms of stunning breadth are born: from the almost abstract to the especially figurative, from pale white to charcoal black. He sometimes produces this black with coffee. The figures are not really identifiable. Sometimes we project the artist himself onto them, sometimes people in his entourage. They bear titles that seem to have more to do with states than descriptions: Waiting for Morning, Appearance of the Past, The Solitary Height, Coming Home. Thresholds. He doesn’t have a kiln in his studio. He has to transport his forms to be fired. He uses a process of carbonisation, (tanka). Here begins the least controlled part of the work’s journey: matter transforms according to laws that Amano knows, yet cannot completely govern. He evokes the aji — the material’s own power. He seeks to meld this with his own personal sensibility, his intention, his gesture. In order to inhibit the absorption of carbon in certain areas – and thus create zones that remain lighter, warmer, while the rest darkens – he applies different types of ash and engobe (keshōdo). The final colours therefore remain out of his control, while he premeditates the contrasts between shadow and light. Recently, he has started to apply thin layers of glaze, observing their chemical reactions with carbon. When the object returns from the kiln, he no longer knows what he was expecting, but he recognizes it. The sculpture is there, irreversible, made of what the fire left upon its surface, of what the hands left behind. A presence has risen, and cannot be undone. What Rises is Yasushi Amano’s first solo exhibition.