Year: 2022
Medium: acrylic and UV printing on canvas
Dimensions: 292.1 x 227.6 cm (115 x 89 5/8 in.)
Acquired from GOLD WOOD ART WORKS, 2022
This work is a commissioned work by Yamaguchi, one of the artists who inspired this collection, on the establishment of the UESHIMA MUSEUM. It is a 3m length large-scale work. Yamaguchi, who temporarily returned to Japan from New York, experimented with a 3-day trial run in the museum space before completing the piece in his New York studio. This work was made at a major turning point for Yamaguchi, whose previous series such as “Out of Bounds”, featured vigorous strokes and shaped canvases that did not require a support structure. Here, he reevaluates the existence of a rectangular canvas as a support structure. Yamaguchi’s signature color is a special blue that was developed by himself and is used prominently in this work. Despite the coolness of colors, it is bursting with terrifying heat energy. The straight, unwavering strokes, seemingly completely beyond containment within the frame of the canvas, create a blistering sense of movement, drawing the viewers into an illusion that even the space around it is being violently shaken. These strokes suddenly drop from top speed to zero due to ruptures of bright color planes, like sharp fragments of broken glass. The textured print substrate and multiple layers of paint give rise to the work’s complex spatial depth. Sculptural, organically undulating lines leave from the depths to the foreground with the irregularity of splashing water, as if they weave through the spaces left by the straight strokes that dominate the screen. Yamaguchi’s strokes, having obtained the new horizon in the form of the canvas, have managed to demonstrate almost maximal kinetic force in pictorial form.
