Year: 2008
Medium: acrylic on wood, iron
Dimensions: 230 x 64 x 55 cm (90 x 1/2 x 25 1/4 x 21 5/8 in.)
Acquired from Tomio Koyama Gallery, 2022
This sculpture takes an extraordinarily unique form. It is a free-standing structure with four iron square columns, each painted in a pale skin-tone hue and with a spherical form mounted at its tip, serving as legs. A wooden carving of a “Gourd” figure stands at the pinnacle of these four columns. In the 2000s, Yamamoto incorporated organic forms reminiscent of mushrooms and vegetation in his work. The organic shapes in this sculpture are strongly indicative of Yamamoto’s interests at that time. Many spherical shapes, like bubbles, are peeking through fissures in the surface layer of the swollen lower section. When observed closely, the work appears to have a face carved near the top of the gourd-like structure, and this realization suddenly gives it a more human feel. It has nothing that could be interpreted as arms, in place of its four legs, and no particular emotion can be read from the face that looks blankly out at the viewer. Nevertheless, and perhaps due to the unbalanced slenderness and the way the form looks down on the viewer from overhead, something is unsettling about the work. When the piece is installed in a space, even when not facing it directly, one cannot help but detect peripheral vision that it is emanating a strong and strange sense of its presence towards them. A sculpture is a form that asserts its presence in a space with a sense of solemnity, yet this work has more vitality, as if poised to spring into motion at any moment. Although the mode of expression is different, one being a painting and the other a sculpture, and there is a gap between their dates of production, it is interesting that one sees a strong iconographic connection between this work and “Decal Reversal Spiral Hime” (2014), which is also held in this collection.
