Fumiaki Aono
Mending, Extension
In
1996, Aono began “mending” or restoring fragments that he salvaged and
collected. Mending, Extension essentially consists of a series of pieces
that are “restored” fragments whose original forms and functions are uncertain.
The “restoration” here does not seek to recover the shape of the whole that the
fragment used to be a part of. Without being tied to the social significance
that these objects used to embody, Aono confronts the form of these residual
fragments, seeking out the original shape that they used to take while working
to repair and extend their missing components. The earliest Mending, Extension, Arahaama, March10-5,1996, ”Unrelated Mending” (1996（figure）) piece consists of a
discarded piece of common Styrofoam repaired using plaster, another fairly
common material. Mending, Extension,
Yuriage, November 25,1995 (1996（figure）), also from the same period, was an attempt to
“extend” a fragment of a Japanese paper screen that Aono salvaged from a street
corner using paper and acrylic paint. Mending, Extension, Yagiyama October
6, 1997(1997（figure）) is a mended scrap of an old futon from Aono’s family
home, affixed onto a panel. Aono feels a certain familiarity or personal
connection in the fragments that he mends, or the materials that he uses to
repair them, as seen in other works like Mending, Extension, Okuniikkawa,
July 12, 2000 (2000(figure）), which was shown at the VOCA Exhibition in 2001,
also consists of futon scraps, and Mending, Extension, Tori no Umi, May 18,
2007 (2007,（figure） ), an extended version of a fragment of a bathroom mat. It is
through this affinity that Aono builds a relationship with these strange
objects.
Mending, Restoration
As
opposed to Mending, Extension, which focused on the work of restoration
by respecting just the fragment to the very end, Aono attached the title Mending,
Restoration to the process of repairing an object by cleaving to the
specific form of the fragment, while honoring the concrete, social attributes
of the object before it became a fragment, such as its shape or function, as
seen in Mending, Restoration, Arahama,
March 10-9,1997 “Unrelated mending” (1997 figure ). Mending,
Restoration, “Restoration of a ship
abandoned in Yuriage” April 12, 1998 (1998 figure ) is a sculptural
example of one of the earliest works from the Restoration series, where
Aono attempted to repair a series of parts salvaged from the rear of an
abandoned ship that had been dismembered near the port using plywood.The
plywood that was also used in a similar way to repair Mending, Restoration, “Restoration
of a Car illegally dumped years before in Higashine” May 15, 2001(2001 figure ) is often deployed
in Aono’s work as a relatively neutral material that is also easily procured.
For Aono, the objective of the restoration is not to recover a vehicle with the
same function as the original car. Neither is it to create a replica with the
same appearance as the original. Without accomplishing the restoration that we
associate with that word, Aono’s work finds completion while still a
“work-in-progress”, when the author has stopped “working” on it. By leaving
behind traces of the restoration process, Aono highlights the relationship
between the fragment and the repaired component, while also alluding to the
other choices that might have been made. As a result, we are also encouraged to
reconsider the validity or legitimacy of the act of restoration. Mending, Restoration,
“Restoration of a stump cut down long ago in Sendai” (2004 figure ) consists of pieces
of plywood joined to felled tree stumps in order to produce a restored version
of their form. This mode of restoration is a document of two truths: the fact
that this big tree used to grow here, and then that it died (or was cut down).
The motivation to create this work — to engrave the fact of a former existence
— seen here continued in Aono’s earthquake disaster series after 2011.
mending, accumulation
While
Extension and Restoration both feature a single fragment from which the
restoration follows, during a certain period in 2004, Aono attempted to restore
a slapdash assortment of three or more fragments, giving them the title
“accumulation” (Mending, Accumulation, 2004-7, 2004 figure). Casting an eye at
the various acts of “restoration” that occur all around us, such as buildings
being maintained, repaired, and expanded, or the changing form of the city over
a long period of time, we can see traces of how various materials are connected
to each other in a complex manner. This act of going back to what Aono calls
the “site of restoration” was his goal in attempting the Accumulation
series. Here, Aono focused his attention on the varied power relationships that
result from how fragments (cross-sections) both complement and conflict with
each other (Aono calls these processes “takeovers”, “infiltrations”, or
“propagations”). One example of this, Mending, Accumulation, Infiltration,
2004-1 (2004 figure), is composed of multiple fragments, producing an
“accumulation” that tends to obscure the distinctive traits of each one. Here,
Aono attempted to render in three-dimensional form the phenomenon by which the
distinctiveness of one of the fragments colored (or infiltrated) the others.
Aono, having investigated the diverse relationships that exist among (at least
three of) these fragments, would go on to reduce the number of fragments and
limit them to two in order to analyze the relationship between them.
Mending, Consolidation
For
the Consolidation series of works, Aono selects two fragments with
something in common that ought to be combined, working to join them together
(and thereby “restoring” them). In most cases, what matters is some kind of
formal affinity: box-like shapes, corners, or surfaces. Instead of an act of
mending, Aono’s focus here seems to have shifted to pay more attention to the
nature of the relationship between each fragment, and how that relationship
gives shape to the object in question. When only one fragment is involved, Aono
sometimes deploys a piece of furniture or some similar object as a substitute
article in order to “repair” it. In Mending, Consolidation: Substitution,
the substitute article is not limited to broken or damaged objects.
Accordingly, the result is a kind of paradoxical situation in which the
substitute material is actually “destroyed” in relation to the act of mending.
In Consolidation, the nature of the relationship between three different entities — the
restored portion added to two fragments, or one fragment and a substitutive
material — produces a variety of classifications, including “fusions,”
“absorptions,” “infiltrations,” “takeovers”, and “coexistences.” When Aono
experiments with restoring new forms, he often uses the trays used to hold
food products(figure1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) that have been discarded on a daily basis. With their
distinctive, shallow plate-like form, these trays are flat and two-dimensional,
while also being able to convert themselves into three-dimensional objects.
Aono began working on Mending, Substitution, Consolidation, Capture, Serial
Arrangement, 2011 (2011 figure ) before the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11,
2011, and exhibited it after the disaster. The work represents a repurposing of
a structure that Aono first experimented with in Mending, Substitution,
Consolidation, Capture, 2005-2 (2005 figure).
the Great East Japan Earthquake
After
the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, Aono did not initially intend to
create works related to the disaster. Almost all the fragments found on the
beach he frequented even before the quake had been destroyed or damaged by the
disaster, and he found himself forced to hesitate when it came to the work of
salvaging. At the end of April 2011, during a visit to Miyako, where one of his
relatives lived, Aono witnessed the disappearance of an entire town that ought
to have been there: before his eyes lay only the floors of all these houses.
That summer, having taken the skeletal structure of the floor of his relative’s
house back home with him, Aono set about “restoring” it by transplanting it
onto the low tea table that he used at home. This incident prompted him to
begin tackling head on the task of restoring objects that had been damaged in
the quake. Rebirth: Land Surface, Outflow, Transplantation, 2012 (2011-2012 figure1,2) an exhibition consisting of a group of restored
works based on various floors and “ground indicators” salvaged from Miyako,
confronts the reality of the town’s disappearance, while also hinting at how
the surface of this lost ground might yet be revived in another form. Mending, Substitution, Consolidation, Serial
Arrangement (2012/2016 figure) is a work
that recreates Aono’s own experience of offering flowers in vases in a sort of
memorial service to the victims of the disaster in each afflicted area. Its
structure, which layers multiple substitute objects on top of each other,
functions as a “foundation stone” (in an act of memorializing the victims).
Aono’s works created after the quake are distinguished by how objects damaged
in the event are displayed through the use of substitutes. At the same time,
Aono enlarges the scale of his work by arranging multiple chests of Japanese tansu
drawers in a serial configuration. These pieces are shaped by his impulse to
salvage objects that are even now at risk of being lost, fixing them in a
visible location, as well as his desire to interpose the tansu chest
that is a familiar presence in Aono’s own daily life, having it serve as a
stand-in for the damaged objects. Faced with the loss of places, things, and a
great number of people caused by the disaster, Aono subsequently embarked on a
new effort to restore articles of clothing. This process entails highlighting
the traces and memories of human presence in the work, while also alluding to
the impossibility of restoration and human absence.
Curator,ＫＩＣＨＩＪＯＪＩ ＡＲＴ ＭＵＳＥＵＭ
conservation piece/peace: from here to there
Fumiaki Aono
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.
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.
Ｏｕｃｈｉ Ｈｉｋａｒｕ
Curator,ＫＩＣＨＩＪＯＪＩ ＡＲＴ ＭＵＳＥＵＭ
The theme of Aono`s work is 〝restoration".
He picks up discarded, soiled objects that are ordinarily despisedtorn pieces of cloth and newspaper, broken or rotted pieces of wood and signboards and uses fragments of them as materials for his art. Using printed patterns, wood grain, printed words, even dirt and mold, as his guides, he adds other materials or paint to the process of damage or soiling that has affected it. Or he may simply restore the basic colors without making other repairs. Truth and falsity are subtly blended so they are hard to distinguish from a distance. The object becomes a different thing, which is close to, but not the same as, the condition imagined from the clues that appeared when it was found.
Aono was motivated to undertake this series when he observed repairs of cracks in a concrete wall in which the cement was applid recklessly. This experience stimulated him to study the 〝practice of retoration" in terms of sociology, language, ethnology, and psychology. Then he defamiliarized this 〝practice of restoration" in his art, making it into an opportunity for fundamental rethinking.
It the artist carries out a process of 〝restoration" carefully and as faithfully as possible to the object, his own creative intentions inevitably play less of a role in the work. However, the overall quantity and degree of restoration required to finish the work are left to the artist`s discretion, so it is impossible to say that his intentions play no part at all. Still, Aono presents his works as 〝objects", and the process that goes into forming them is not evident to the viewer. They seem to have been transformed into natural objects with the passage of time and the effect of the element. We are made to perceive them in diverse ways and urged to think about the signiificance of artistic creation, the position of the artist, the physical mode of existence of the object itself and the flow of time.
-NISHIMURA lsaharu
Chief Curator,The Miyagi Museum of Art
Objects Reincarnated from the Quaking Earth
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.
Restoring waste articles or detritus picked up on the beach, and vesting
them with a subtly different shape from their original from frees the
imagination. It is a process of redefining products whose life had ended
and vanished from society, and rehabilitating the significance of their
existence.
Fumiaki Aono is an artist who picks up discarded fragmental scraps,and redeems the whole by making up the lost part,turning them into new object.His works give a new life to things whose life would otherwise have expired and are pregnant with meaning when exhibited in the Kokaido,which had also survived the threat of demolition. Although simple in their from, they were impressive works, leaving room for various interpretations.
Ryoko NEMOTO
Assistant curator, the Iwate Museum of Art