Tatsuo Kawaguchi’s “Relations”
By, Rachael Solberg
In his sculpture, Time of the Lotus: Relation – Plant, Tatsuo Kawaguchi places a large emphasis on the cultural tradition of Japan through the use of contemporary media in Japanese art. His rendition of the lotus plant on lead encompasses modern ideas of how art is rendered, but strongly connects it to the Japan’s past by using a traditional Buddhist symbol. Kawaguchi, most well-known for all of his “Relation” sculptures, wishes to engage the viewer in connecting the past to the present, human to nature, and Japan to the rest of the world by using strong materials (in this case lead) to project a very abstract idea.
The fact that Kawaguchi never completely exposes his subject matter is a very important aspect to his works of art. The idea is for the viewer to look beyond the material and the ‘now’, and stretch their minds to incorporate all the figure could symbolize, and how we are connected to it today. In Time of the Lotus, we can see the outline of the plant, but we do not see the actual plant. Kawaguchi shows it to us only through its outline in lead. This partial covering of his subject matter is purposely done as Kawaguchi wishes his audience to “seek information not readily apparent” in his art (Koplos 71).
Kawaguchi uses these basic principles in all of his art. As seen in his other sculptures, he only uses the bare minimum to represent the ideas of a network of relations and connections to the broader context of mainly Japanese culture and nature. When he doesn’t use lead to express his ideas, he will turn to materials actually found in nature. In his Echoes piece, Kawaguchi places objects from nature into a contrived placement in order to evoke some sort of abstract feeling or idea from his viewers. I think that most of the time, he wants the viewer to extrapolate on his ideas to get what they can out of his work instead of limiting them to the one idea he is thinking of while creating his sculptures.