Objects Reincarnated from the Quaking Earth

Kim Jeong-bok ‖Art Critic

The majority of Japanese contemporary art introduced to Korea from the 1990s on consisted of works by artists born in the 1960s, who align themselves with Japan Pop or Neo-Japan Pop. The works of AONO Fumiaki (青野文昭, 1968~), who was born in 1968, stand at a considerable distance from mainstream contemporary Japanese art from his generation, in terms of his methodology of collecting everyday objects and appending human “activity.” He was mentored by TAKAYAMA Noboru (高山登, 1944~), a representative Monoha artist who is widely known for his work with sleepers, but Aono Fumiaki deals with the relationality with others, and the location and memories of objects from a perspective that differs from that of Monoha or post-Monoha artists who sought a return to the essence of materiality through objects. The key point in Aono Fumiaki’s works, which will be introduced at his first solo exhibition in Korea to be held at Arario Gallery in April 2014, is how he places equal level on the creative act of “making” (producing) and the act of fixing in the form of “repairing.” In traditional craft, repairing was subsumed under the process of supplementation, but in Aono Fumiaki’s work, it is itself a fundamental component of his creation.

The act of Repairing, “Coupling and Substitution,” and Rendering Objects Anonymous

The act of “repairing”, which Aono Fumiaki has constantly developed into his own methodology since his first solo exhibition in 1991, emerged from an accidental discovery. Upon seeing traces of filled in cracks on a concrete wall nearby his residence, he is attracted to formative figures whereby field for the coexistence of coincidence and necessity are generated, as “crossings” were arising from an inorganic wall, catalyzed by human acts of craft. A condition in which properties such as “transformation, proliferation, consolidation, and incursion” born from the process of physically supplementing or mending damaged, worn down, no longer useful and therefore discarded objects shake up and reorganize the perfect image of objects. Aono’s repairing goes beyond simply supplementing and correcting forms, and serves as the fountain of new creation, reorganizing and transforming objects into unfamiliar matter.

To repair an object, one must first collect. Aono Fumiaki’s personal interest in collecting general and cultural objects from around the world, and exploring simultaneous, multi-layered expressions seen in such objects, can be found in his “mediatory formation.” Especially, “Coupling and Substitution”, which is a concept that refers to a consolidation of damaged objects with supplementary materials, is a unique idea that underlies his art world. Aono’s “coupling and substitution” differs from “the serial” or “linkage,” each of which refers to multiple layers of supplementary patterns or an expansion of flow. Aono replaces damaged parts of discarded objects with supplementary materials, and transforms them into a status that harbors various potentials. in which different traces coexist. He exposes the state of “letting be” itself, such as “just being placed together,” “just being aligned,” or “just being collectively,” and tries to highlight the contrast between noise and neutral, abstraction and concreteness, mass-produced objects and the hand-made, the I and the other, and past and present. Therefore, Aono’s repairing work does not aim to revive the object to its original state. Instead, his work aspire to a “generative restoration” that recreates the shifting ambiguities in the process of a damaged object, its traces and the vestiges of its restoration gradually becoming something else, an anonymous object, noting that a complete return to the original state is an impossibility.

Aono Fumiako’s tendency to use objects he came across in daily life moved on towards public awareness steeped in social significance; a representative case is his open road repair work, which took place on the streets of Sendai in 2009~2010. This particular work resists the custom of presenting the traces of repairing and restoring daily objects as works of art to be owned individually. He literally sits out on the street and conducts his repair work while people walk by. The repair process is captured on screen and uploaded to Youtube. From the perspective of the “aesthetics of relationality”, the artist questions the concept of the public that stands apart from art, and reflects on his own life as one that relies on the public through traces of restoration, fixed in a specific locale, and constantly exposed to an unspecified multitude.

Drifting Surface, Reincarnation as Transplanted Matter

The Earthquake in East Japan, which happened on March 11 2011, was a turning point in Aono’s repair work. This is when his focus on material form, the process of which centered on neutral and geometric “transformation” derived from the act of “repairing,” began to wear hues of social consciousness such as “regeneration” or “healing.” For instance, <Low Tables Covered with Floor Materials from Houses Destroyed in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami >, installed at the underground floor in the exhibition hall, is a repair work that had been submitted before the solo exhibition he held at his hometown Sendai in 2012, entitled 《Reincarnation ? Surface, Outflow, Transplantation》. The table, placed in spaces of daily life, means the first shared foundation on which we build relationships with others ? the act of “sitting at the same table.” The table, which had been part of an artificial surface/floor attached to different locations (lands), was torn away from its original spot and moved to another place. The surface-table with unique time, space, history, and context was transplanted to an unfamiliar and neutral locale by disastrous forces, and has become a drifting surface in on out-of-context space. Objects owned by family members or relatives of the artist or unfamiliar others who suffered from the earthquake are cut off from the space where its original users interacted; the objects are swept up in the throes of external incursion (the Tsunami), and acquire an autonomous status in its new resting place. The artist collects and repairs the debris from the catastrophe, and reincarnates them into unique objects that are transformed into unfamiliar matter devoid of functionality yet full of some potential, thereby allowing the coexistence of memories from the disaster.

The hall on the second floor features daily household objects that were collected from the Earthquake and later repaired, such as the rice bowl, playing card, plastic bottle, CD case, and the piece of red toy. They bear meanings that differ from that of mere, discarded objects. These objects attests to the loss of its original users who were swept away by the Tsunami, and they also serve as records of how these users’ lives were destroyed. Aono’s repair-restoration work heals the traumas from the Tsunami, but also implies the fate of human existence ? how we are destined to be destroyed and sacrificed throughout our lives, and must coexist surrounded by absolute alterities and inevitabilities. Aono’s repair-restoration work creates subtle difference in the form of surface of an object, encompassing “temporality” arising from the crossovers of past and present, and exposing the “activity” of handcraft work on inorganic wholes. He transforms objects that bear traces of human usage into a state of neutral abstraction. His act does not secure an abstract and neutral foundation (a kind of basal plane). Rather, it connotes a “quaking” attached to an actual “location or situation.” In other words, the way in which the repaired and restored object is placed is quaking and shaking, regardless of the artist’s own thoughts.

Still Alive in the Quaking Empire.

Since East Japan’s Great Earthquake on March 11, certain voices tinged with dark humor suggested that Japan should change its national name into “Quaking Empire” (Yura Yurak Teikoku) on Twitter’s Japanese timeline. The implied reference here is Japan’s rock band Yura Yura Teikoku (1989~2010), whose portfolio includes a love song entitled <Still Alive (Mada Ikite Iru)>. Living on in a quaking empire where the surface often shakes and trembles, and one’s daily life is constantly exposed to imminent destruction, comes closer to a repaired life begun anew rather than making something entirely new. The unpredictable, shaky prospects of life are not limited to Japan. Even here, unexpected disasters or collapses occur when we open our eyes in the morning, unsuspecting.

The act of “repairing” in Aono Fumiaki’s work goes beyond simply fixing and restoring man-made objects, and encompasses human relations and social systems ? perhaps even the human body, life form, and its cells. Whether it be the dissolution of a psychological value system, or exogenous destruction from incursions or attacks, one must adopt the attitude of fixing, repairing, restoring, reorganizing, and restructuring something in order to survive in a quaking empire. It is critical for us to contextualize Aono’s regeneration project within the rubrics of our lives here and now. Living inevitably entails quaking and shaking under external influences. Therefore, the “act of repairing” or its “traces” harbors a sustainable power source embedded within human perception or cognition.