From surface to surface

Susumu Koshimizu

MEDIUM: 30 pine beams 

They are sliced at varying intervals and angles

In the mid-1970s, the artist began his working table series, which develops the ideas initially in from surface to surface, and the wood is indicated by varying degrees of pools of water, or supplemented by piles of branches or slender bumps.
This is the work of Susumu Koshimizu, a key member of the Japanese art group MONO-HA. His research into material, indication and space from an early age has produced some of the most iconic artworks.
I watched tate’s interview with the artist. He said that he wanted to use such uniformly sized pieces of wood as a metaphor for life – from a distance they look the same, but up close they look different.

I thought it was a very unique perspective. Especially with a material as straightforward as bare wood as a medium, that’s what makes it special.

mono-ha was a pioneering movement that emerged in Tokyo in the mid-1960s whose artists, instead of making traditional representational artworks, explored materials and their propertied in reaction to what they saw as ruthless development.
To some extent, they can be seemed as the grey-zone between Arte Povera & minimalism.

Overall, this movement fundamentally defined the Japanese art scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s with its ephemeral installations of natural and industrial materials. Figures represented include Lee Ufan, Nokuo Sekine, Susumu Kohimizu Kishio Suga… Often believing that the artist’s ability to make things had been superseded by technology, they abandoned traditional ideas in favour of expressing the true nature of the world through materials and exploring their properties.