A recurring characteristic in the Japanese aesthetic sensibility
is a desire to express the experience of being in harmony with the underlying
essence of nature. Sometimes this essence will be manifested as energy
or movement, as in Sumi or Zen painting, or Japanese drumming. Other aesthetic
practices such as the tea ceremony or stone gardens emphasize nature's
harmonious serenity. Often art forms will incorporate references to both
action and repose, energy and equilibrium, dynamism and passivity - ying/yang:
the ultimate interrelatedness of apparent opposites which constitutes the
unifying principle of the universe. This active/contemplative dynamic can
be discerned in the contrast of rough rock and smooth sand in a stone garden,
stillness and sudden movements in the martial arts, or the marriage of
randomness and refinement in the ceramic arts. It is with this dynamic
in mind that Kazuo Kadonaga's sculpture might be considered.
Kadonaga's chosen media are wood and paper, the former a creation
of nature herself, and the latter produced by human processing of natural
wood. In working with either material, Kadonaga's intention is to discover
and reveal its inner essence as manifested in the pattern of its fibres.
This approach differs greatly from the traditional Western aesthetic, which
tended to view a piece of wood or stone as a tabula rasa which could be
cut and shaped to reveal a form or image the artist already had in mind.
But toward the end of the 1960's the limitations of this attitude had become
apparent to Western artists like Robert Smithson or Richard Serra, who
began to subject natural materials such as earth or logs to processes which
disclose the inherent qualities of the medium rather than the hand of the
artist. As the world shrinks through mass transportation and communication,
the potential becomes greater for the understanding and integration of
cultural values and attitudes which differ from one's own.
To use Western terminology, Kadonaga's aesthetic procedure
might be looked at as a combination of Conceptual and Process Art, but
only if we keep in mind that these are terms invented for contemporary
art that we might use in order to facilitate the understanding of an ancient
Japanese perspective. The concept he operates from is the desire to reveal
the tree's essence, in terms of the process of its fibres' movements, without
leaving the stamp of his individual personality on the finished form. Kadonaga's
process begins in the forest, where he chooses which cedar and cypress
trees will become sculpture.
When first cut, the trees are "wet". It is only
as they dry in the studio that their inner cores reveal themselves. To
facilitate this disclosure Kadonaga subjects the logs to a variety of processes
- first stripping the bark, then cutting the log in very thin slices, and
often hitting the log on one end with a mallet. The slicing is done in
a variety of ways - sometimes lengthwise, sometimes following the circular
contours of the trunk so that the slices can be peeled off if the log is
rolled along the floor. Usually cut paper thin, the slices of wood are
then glued back together in their original configuration. As they dry,
they proceed to come apart by themselves, revealing the tree's eccentric
and unique patterns of fibre structure. When the artist hits one end of
the scored log, a particular pattern of cracking appears in the opposite
end, displaying irregularities of inner structure that are not apparent
on the surface.
Often geometric and organic forms are found to cohabit the
same tree. For example, in making a cut into a log on one end, following
the edges of one of the tree's growth rings, Kadonaga came out with a square
form at that end. However, when cutting lengthwise along the edge of the
same annual ring for the length of the log, he produced a significant curve
in the surface of the log. Even if this log is cut in half, or into several
smaller segments, the same pattern will remain at each end, demonstrating
that nature, rather than the artist, has created this sculpture's form.
Although the artist had originally chosen this tree because of its apparent
straightness, its inner growth patterns exhibit twists and turns. There
is more to the world than meets the eye. In a sense. Kadonaga's process
makes the invisible visible. .His deliberate erasure of his own presence
m the final product like the "emptiness" of the stone garden,
speaks of The Formless Self of Zen.
Kadonaga is interested in revealing the essence of form rather
than creating it. Even after they are completed, his sculptures continue
to display their organic processes in response to their particular environment,
shrinking and contracting in hot, dry weather, swelling with greater humidity,
and occasionally emitting small cracking or splitting sounds ; always exhibiting
the potential for becoming that is the fundamental promise of the universe.
In his bamboo pieces Kadonaga adopts a different methodology.
Placing each large section of bamboo half inside and half outside a kiln,
he chars one portion of the bamboo while leaving the other with its natural
coloration. Depending upon the position a section of the bamboo occupies
in the kiln, its coloration is altered subtly, and the heat induces a sheen
on the bamboo's surface. We are able to observe a rich and dense array
of subtle surface and color variations that are produced by the action
of heat on the organic material, rather than by the movement of the artist's
hand. But of course the process is initiated and partially controlled by
the artist. The fine balance between nature's randomness and humankind's
efforts to achieve control is a recurrent thematic concern in Kadonaga's
work.
The paper pieces are realized according to the same principles
as the wood - a desire to reveal the innate character of the medium with
the least possible evidence of the artist's personality. After an elaborate
procedure for producing washi, or Japanese handmade paper, in which he
himself does not participate, Kadonaga allows the scale and shape of the
sheets to determine the sculpture's formats. The only decision he makes
is the number of sheets he wants to be pressed together. After the chosen
number have been pressed until they become as dense and hard as wood, Kadonaga
peels away a portion of each sheet from the mass, one by one.
Whether hung as wall reliefs or installed on the floor or
a base, the format of the paper sculptures is geometric - a rectangle,
triangle, or square which is smaller and denser on one end, and expanded
and opened through peeling on the other. This process can be seen as a
metaphor for the psyche's. Like the wood pieces, the paper sculptures are
at once sensuous and restrained, in traditional Japanese practice.
Potential/completed, natural/processed, serene/volatile, active/passive
-these and many more are the dichotomies Kadonaga's work presents to us
for contemplation. They do so in a manner that is quiet, refined, subtle
and unimposing. Therefore we must be willing to slow down the fast-paced
life style our culture demands of us in order to be able to absorb the
ephemeral nuances of color, texture, density, shape, surface and light
that Kadonaga's work reveals only slowly. This mode of perception is unfamiliar
to those accustomed to the thirty-second pacing of television, or to video
games, but has much to recommend it; the promise of dicovery through gradual
exposure in response to focused awareness.