Year: 2019
Medium: plastic, wood, steel, rubber found objects, pigment, resin
Dimensions: 152 x 113 x 41 cm (59 7/8 x 44 1/2 x 16 1/8 in.)
Acquired from Yumiko Chiba Associates, 2023
“White Discharge” is one major series that Kaneuji has been working on since the beginning. He stacks various objects in a pile and pours white resin over them. In this piece, he gathers random things like figurines, pipes, containers, and daily goods in a heap atop chair legs, creating a fortress or tower. Although Kaneuji is a sculptor, he does not carve materials like stone and wood. Instead, he presents constructions, which convert ready-made goods such as everyday items, industrial products, and toys as sculpture. As the components are ready-made objects, each of them has specific functions, usages, and meanings, and those attributes would have given them their inherent significance. In the piece, however, Kaneuji intentionally ignores those existing attributes and connects things that would not usually be positioned next to one another. Moreover, the white liquid covers up their shapes. Just as heavy snow covers streets, bridges, and houses in pure white, blurring their outlines and boundaries, in Kaneuji’s “White Discharge,” inherent meanings and images are nullified in the white. Etymologically, “discharge” means the release (dis-) of something that was full (charge). The attributes that had saturated the aggregate of unidentifiable objects constructed by Kaneuji pour out as an oozing white fluid. While everything is mixed together, there are a few objects in their original state, peeping toward the viewer from the occasional gap. When things that go unnoticed in daily life, or are abandoned without recognition, they shine all the brighter just before when they are about to perish.
