「コンサベーション_ピース ここからむこうへ partA 青野文昭展」カタログ・テキスト-2
武蔵野市立吉祥寺美術館(東京) 学芸員 大内曜

コンサベーション_ピース ここからむこうへ

青野文昭

conservation piece/peace: from here to there

Fumiaki Aono

 

 

青野文昭(1968生まれ)は宮城教育大学大学院在学中の1990年、前年に自らが直面したある森林破壊をきっかけに、制作のテーマに「修復」を掲げ始めた。それは、卒業制作のための絵画作品のモチーフに選んだ森が公園地整備を理由に突如伐採されるという出来事であったが、この「破壊」に衝撃を受けた青野がまず取り組んだのは、切り落とされた小枝の集積によってかつてそこにあったはずの大木を表現する連作であった。青野はこののち、「破壊と再生、および循環」をテーマに、自ら描いた作品を火で燃やし、それに「修復」をほどこすという試みにも着手している。このように、青野による「修復」は当初より、もと通りにするという目的よりも、ある種の「再生の姿」を示すことで、そこに至る前提として横たわる破壊や忘却という営みを視覚化するという点に注意が払われたものだった。

1996年以降は、自ら拾い集めた破損物を用い、その欠損部分を自身の知識と想像力によって「修復」するという制作スタイルを維持している。「なおす」というタイトルが付されたそれらの作品は、破損物=断片に残された模様やある形態的特徴が青野の手によって延々と反復させられたり(なおす・延長)、あえて簡素な材料を用いて断片となる以前の姿かたちが再現させられたり(なおす・復元)するものであるが、いずれにせよ、そのものの本来の用途に従って機能を回復させたり、傷を目立たなくするような意味での「修復」とは異なる性質のものである。

断片に寄り添いながらも、明らかに作家の判断に多くを依って新たなかたちが与えられていく青野の一連の作品において顕在化するのはむしろ、「なおせない」ことである。そこには、「もと通りにする」という概念を帯びる(と私たちが感じる)、「修復」というある意味傲慢とも言える姿勢に対する疑念がほのめかされていると同時に、「修復」という行為の過程に元来含まれるはずの「(現状に対し)どのように収拾をつけるか」という思考の形跡そのものに創造的価値を見出そうとする作家の態度が示されている。青野は、何かが壊れた時、あるいは失われた時に生じる、もの(断片)ともの(断片)との新しい関係性や全てのかたちの変化を創造性に富んだ営みと捉えながら、その「修復」のかたちの中に、現実社会における人と人との関係性や社会の構造といった世界像を映し込もうともしている。

 

 

企画展「コンサベーション_ピース ここからむこうへ」は、失われた/残された記憶(のかけら【piece】)を保存【conservation】するとは、それらとどのような関わりを築き上げていくことであるのかという問いに、青野文昭の作品・制作態度と、アーカイブ・プロジェクトAHA![Archive for Human Activities/人類の営みのためのアーカイブ]による、69年生きたゾウ・はな子(20165月に井の頭自然文化園にて没)をめぐる記録の断片の収集・編集を行うプロジェクト「はな子のいる風景」という2者の異なるアプローチを通じ、向かい合うことを目的として立ち上げられた。本展にむけ、青野は、展覧会開催の約1年前より武蔵野市内における収拾活動やフィールドワークを開始し、同時に吉祥寺美術館は市内住民を対象とするタンスなどの不要家具や日用品の募集及び回収を実施した。それら武蔵野市周辺地域で廃棄された/集められた大量の「もの」を青野自身が仙台のアトリエに運び、完成させたのが、大型作品《水源をめぐるある集落の物語:東京-吉祥寺・井の頭AD2017BC15000》である。

長方形の内部空間を取り囲むかたちで30余りのタンス・家具類を連結・設置した本作の外周壁面には、タンスという土台の中に、廃棄された自転車や車、衣服、書籍などが埋め込まれ、自転車の乗り手となって街を行き交う人の姿までが壁の中に「復元」されている(青野は、武蔵野市内のフィールドワークにおいて、自転車利用者の多さが印象に残ったという)。その内側に設けられた空間の床面は武蔵野の水源(井の頭池)に見立てられ、その池を取り囲む(タンスでできた)壁面には、縄文土器、武蔵野八幡宮で出土した蕨手刀、第二次大戦末期の中島飛行機(武蔵野市に位置したゼロ戦などの軍用機エンジンの大規模工場)をめがけた空襲、井の頭自然文化園の動物やジブリ美術館など、古代から現代にいたる土地の記憶が、地層をなすように浮き彫りに/記録されている。

そのような井の頭池をとりまく土地の歴史とともに、ここには、他者の住居から持ち出された/道で拾われてきた衣服や靴そして時計や食器などの日用品、回収したタンスの引き出しに敷かれたままになっていたデパートの包装紙、たばこの吸い殻、汚れた大量の空き缶やペットボトルといった数々の廃棄物の断片も埋め込まれる。かつて消費されたもの、廃棄されたものの再集結。それは、それらが捨てられた場所や時をあたかも再現する/復元するような行いであるが、しかしここでは、それらはどこまでも廃棄されたかけらの集積であり、ものも、空間も、時間も、「なおる」ことはない。想起されるのは、かつて地表面に廃棄されたものや記憶が、目に見えなくなり、消失されるまでに費やされた膨大な熱量のことである。青野は、このような現実を目の当たりにさせることで、ものごとのとりかえしのつかなさ、残すということの不自然さ、そして困難さに私たちを直面させる。

このような表現を通じて青野の作品は、なおすことや残すということの本意を私たちに問いかける一方、青野自身は実のところ、自分の家族が使っていた靴や自転車など、自分自身にとっての思い出の品や、戦時下において仙台に疎開・移住する以前、かつて吉祥寺にあった実家に暮らした祖母や曾祖母の記憶のかけらを作品の中にまぎれこませることで、自らが提示したその限界を飛び越え、様々な他者(他の収拾物が運ぶ記憶)との接近をはかっている。それぞれに異なる記憶を運ぶ収拾物同士の断絶が、青野、そして、作品に対峙する鑑賞者たちの記憶を介して繋ぎ合わされる時、ここにいない人びとの記憶が新たに動き出し、ふたたび飛び交いはじめる。

 

 

Fumiaki Aono (born 1968) started working with the theme of restoration in 1990 as a graduate student at the Miyagi University of Education, after having experienced firsthand the sight of a forest being destroyed the previous year. This forest, a motif that he had chosen for a series of paintings as part of his graduation exhibition, was abruptly being felled in order to make way for a park. Thoroughly shocked by the spectacle of this destruction, Aono’s first foray was a series of works that attempted to use an accumulation of small cut branches to recreate the large tree that ought to have been there in the first place. During this period, Aono also began experimenting with setting his own works ablaze and then “restoring” them, inspired by the themes of destruction, rebirth, and circulation. In this sense, Aono’s restorations have been concerned with showing how an object is reborn, rather than the objective of returning it to its original condition. Attention is paid to the act of visualizing the processes of destruction and forgetting that are assumed to underlie its restoration. 

 

Since 1996, Aono’s style has consistently been focused on using broken objects that he salvages and collects himself, relying on his own knowledge and imagination to “restore” the missing portion. These works, which feature the word “mending” in their titles, include Mending: Extension, in which vestigial patterns in the fragments, or some distinctive formal property in the broken object, are repeated over and over again by Aono. Mending: Restoration, on the other hand, features a deliberate use of simple materials that recreate the form of the object before it was reduced to a fragment. Whatever the case, these objects are essentially different from “restorations” in the sense of recovering a function in accordance with the original use of that object, or making the damage done to it less conspicuous.  

 

Even while he relies on their fragments, what becomes obvious in Aono’s works, which acquire a new form that clearly depends in no small degree to the artist’s own judgment, is that these objects are irreparable. Alluded to here is a suspicion of a certain arrogance embedded in the term “restoration,” which (one might feel) implies the notion of returning something to its original condition. At the same time, the irreparability of these objects demonstrates Aono’s determination to uncover creative value within the traces of an impulse to salvage what remains, which was originally implied by the very process of restoration. For Aono, the new relationships that emerge when something breaks or is lost, as well as all kinds of shape-shifting, are processes rich in creative potential: he seeks to reflect an entire worldview, consisting of human relationships in contemporary society and its social structure, within the shape of that “restoration.” 

 

 

The exhibition “conservation piece/peace: from here to there” was launched in order to tackle the question of what sort of relationships are created with lost or vestigial pieces of memories through the act of conserving them, by deploying two different approaches — Fumiaki Aono’s own artworks and artistic stance, and the “Landscape with Hanako” project, which consisted of collecting and editing a series of documentary fragments surrounding Hanako the elephant (who lived for 69 years before passing away in the Inogashira Zoo in May 2016), as part of the archive project Archive for Human Activities (AHA!). In preparation for this exhibition, Aono started salvaging objects and conducting fieldwork in Musashino City around a year before it was to be held. At the same time, the Kichijoji Art Museum put out an open call and started collecting unwanted, disused furniture and everyday objects such as chests of tansu drawers from local residents. Aono then transported these large quantities of objects discarded in or collected from the Musashino area to his studio in Sendai. The finished product was the large-scale work, “Tale of a city that settled around a river source — Inogashira, Tokyo, 2017 AD—15000 BC.”

 

Made up of a concatenation of some 30 chests of Japanese tansu drawers and other pieces of furniture that encircle a rectangular interior space, the outer wall of this work features discarded bicycles, cars, clothes, and books embedded within the foundation offered by the drawers, so that the forms of the people who crisscrossed the city as the riders of these bicycles seem to have been “restored” within these walls (Aono says that the sheer number of cyclists he encountered while conducting fieldwork in Musashino City made a particular impression on him). The floor of the space within these walls is a stand-in for the water source of Musashino (Inogashira Pond), while the walls (made of chests of drawers) surrounding this pond function as a document, in a sort of relief that resembles layers of earth, of various memories tied to this land from ancient times up until the present. Memorialized here are Jomon-era earthenware pots, iron swords with curved pommels unearthed from the grounds of the Musashino Hachiman-gu Shrine, the air raids that targeted the Nakajima airplane factory in Musashino responsible for manufacturing the military plane engines for Zero fighter aircraft towards the end of World War II, the animals in Inogashira Zoo, and the Ghibli Museum.

 

 

Also embedded here, in addition to these histories of the land that surrounds Inogashira Pond, are clothes, shoes, everyday items like clocks and tableware that were taken from the houses of others, or salvaged from the street, and fragments of countless discarded items, including department store wrapping paper lining the bottom of tansu chests of drawers that had been recovered, cigarette butts, and empty soiled cans and plastic bottles in huge quantities. Reunited here is an assemblage of objects that were consumed and discarded long ago, the result of an act of recreating and restoring the places and times where they were discarded. This, however, is ultimately an accumulation of discarded fragments: there is no “mending” of these objects, spaces, or times. What comes to mind is how these objects and memories, discarded onto the earth’s surface, gradually disappear from our sight, as well as the massive volume of energy that was expended for them to get to that point. By getting us to witness this reality, Aono urges us to confront the tenacity with which things and events are repatriated, and the absurdity, artificiality, and difficulty of holding onto things. 

 

In this way, Aono’s works interrogate the true intentions that underlie our attempts to mend, hold on to, or retain things. At the same time, however, Aono has also mingled within his work shoes, bicycles, and other objects that his own family used, objects with personal memories attached to them, as well as fragments of memories of his grandmother and great-grandmother, who used to live in his family home in Kichijoji before being forced to evacuate and move to Sendai during the war. In this way, he transcends the boundaries that he himself has laid down, devising methods of approaching the “other” in various guises (that is to say, memories conjured up by other salvaged objects). This sense of disjuncture between salvaged objects each attached to different memories, when joined together through memories of Aono and viewers confronting the work, create a situation in which the memories of those absent begin to stir and take flight once again.