WATER SPIRITS
yuko moriyama solo exhibition
2008.09.05 – 09.28 12:00 – 18:00
open on fridays, saturdays and sundays
appointments are available on weekday
opening reception 2008.09.06 (sat.) 18:00 – 20:00
Water Spirits
Closing my eyes in a moment of quietness, I see a lake inside my mind. This lake is sometimes slowly undulating in darkness, and at other times shimmering under a blue sky. This feeling may come from the primordial past when living organisms started emerging from water. I see spirituality in water, as many religions regard water as sacred.
“Water Spirits” has been the theme of my work since 1999 when I started working as a full time artist. Until then I was working as an architect. When embarking on my artistic practice, I tried to consider what was fundamental and basic to myself and I chose “ Water” as my subject. Pencil and paper were chosen as the medium because I felt they were the most familiar materials to me.
In 1996 I went to see an exhibition of “The Prinzhorn Collection” at the Hayward Gallery in London. This collection consists of art works by psychiatric patients collected by a German psychiatrist, Hans Prinzhorn, around the beginning of the 20th century. My title “Water Spirits” was taken from the work by Arthur F. Becker which I saw at this exhibition.
“Water Spirits
I was sitting in bed, then out of the water came just sort of – how shall I say? – sort of beasties, and my mother was one of them. They were half humans, half animals; I saw that quite clearly. There was some witchcraft in it. I think my mother was trying to pull me into the water, and perhaps that way I would have been taken out of this world – when I lie still, it still happens now and then. – in the air I see it, it’s best in twilight.”
Arthur F. Becker
Becker’s work consists of a small pencil drawing and writing. I was struck by this drawing because it made me feel that I could look through to the bottom of his mind. Including Becker’s work, I was very moved by the works at this exhibition. Many of them were frighteningly transparent in the sense that they made me feel that it was possible to feel the other side of my mind. I would like to produce art like those works.
It is one of my goals to produce works of depth by using familiar every day materials, such as pencils and paper. In a physics class, many years ago, I was impressed by Newton’s Laws of Motion. We were told that one can go to the moon by using these simple equations. I think it is very beautiful to find something very deep in something which may appear so simple. It is my aim to go somewhere deep using just pencil and paper.
Yuko Moriyama-Wiffen
July 2008
