Now, just as the dysfunctions of language are in a sense summarized in an auditory sign, stammering, similarly the good functioning of the machine is displayed in a musical being: the rustle.
The rustle is the noise of what is working well [...] to rustle is to make audible the very evaporation of the noise: the tenuous, the blurred, the tremulous are received as the signs of an auditory annulation.
Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language. pp.76-77
Shinji Ohmaki's sculptures always advance propositions, such as the extreme compression of pedestals or volumes until they are no more than relief, that are antithetical to the proposition of traditional sculpture. Volumes in his sculptures are like textures—as thin as flower petals, the powdery substance left by dried correction fluid, or lines engraved on a surface. Many of his works are composed of layered transparent or translucent materials that permit only the most subtle warmth and diffuse light to escape from shadowy crevasses, making his various possible inscriptions recede with time into unknowable traces. It is as if his work penetrates what traditional sculpture declares and makes it stammer. Has the sensation of volume been a hallucination all along? Must we always block light with heavy and opaque materials to insist that only form and texture can be vehicles of what Benjamin called aura? Ohmaki does not merely affirm or deny these propositions, but rather, to the greatest extent possible, diminishes the hallucination, even reducing it to powder in a theatrical space. This is because only by diminishing can openings and illuminated gaps appear, and these allow air to penetrate and light to spread, such that existence can breathe, be conscious, and take shape.
From some (or even most) of his artworks, such as Liminal Air Space-Time, Echoes – Crystallization, and Gravity and Grace, it appears that layers are an extremely important visual element for Ohmaki. The layer is a radical departure from the proposition of volume (a layer is a radically transformed volume), but here, absolutely does not follow the idea that a volume can be broken down into points, lines, and planes. Nor does it follow the lineage from avant-garde schools of the early 20th to Pop Art, or have anything to do with current trends, where artists seek different concepts in the media or its messages. Layer and plane are completely different formations: a plane is a conceptualized symbolic space, while layer is a space of survival—a space for living because it allows air, light, water vapor, and particles to flow through. It therefore can be said that Ohmaki's layer sculptures are auditory, and their sound is that sound of existence coming from the layer of survival. Because of layers, the sound of existence is guided into an ecological network by the artist, and therefore this network, which is suggested by the interwoven texture he draws on the surface, is the expression of these layers.
Liminal Air Space-Time, 2020 Gravity and Grace, 2017, detail
Ohmaki does not think about existence as a constant struggle between gravity and antigravity, and his work is not like the statue Laocoön and His Sons, exploding with dynamic force and the tenacity of time to suggest rushing emotions and divine ascendance. Nor does he rely on modernity's sublimity of absolute transcendence by controlling or playing with the gravity borne by a body. Instead, Ohmaki allows existence to survive. His inherent proposition regarding sculpture is to consider existence as survival, which is the idea that life becomes possible based on the ecological conditions present in an environment. This is why his artwork can be defined as environmental sculpture or considered as objects taking shape. In actuality his work has always addressed humanity, as evidenced by Portrait—a work from his student days and on display in Gallery 101. However, he does not address humanity through the human figure, but rather through human existence (survival), and a world that allows this survival, a world of air and light. Only when occupying this world can we hear the wind and then sound.
What layer expresses in Ohmaki's work is what Fumihiko Sumitomo wrote in his 2018 article Perceiving Unpredictable Nature, “If you trace the surface of Flotage – Tectonics with your eyes, the movement of its countless fibrous lines will stimulate thoughts of the historical transitions of characters within you.” In other words, in addition to its sense of space for life, the layer has a poetic construction, just like a notation of a worldview, especially his Flotage series, in which every scratch inscribed on acrylic panels or bricks looks like texture, a topographic map, patterns, or plant fibers all mixed together.
In Flotage, his installation in Gallery 103 of this exhibition, Ohmaki makes use of two spindle-shaped mechanisms suspended over a large circular layer of patterns on the floor, thus forming a cosmological relationship between heaven and Earth. These mechanisms also suggest writing machines but do not make contact with the layer on the floor. If the work is inspired by the wind writing ripple-like traces across the snow, then what is written on the circular layer is the earliest recording of culture. The mixed patterns on the layer are almost like hieroglyphs, and as Fumihiko Sumitomo wrote, they are reminiscent of writing about grain and the landscape during humanity's initial agricultural era. Chihiro Minato, in The 10 Billion Light-Year Jar: The Perception of Scenery Created by Shinji Ohmaki, an archaeological-based critique of Ohmaki's work Grace and Gravity, wrote, “[…] drama is played out in a shadow play at the cosmic range.” We can all imagine that the wind traversing the snow is drawing a Jōmon map traversing time across the artist's heart.
Flotage, 2004-2006、Liminal Air-Core-Sky, Liminal Air-Core-Ground, 2015, detail
The care for life in Ohmaki's sculpture is really this deep. In his two series Abyss and Flotage—Tectonics, perhaps climate and culture come together in a kind of survival rewriting that connects materiality, pattern, assemblage, plasticity, installation, and lighting to the artist's imagination of life. His work involving layers is focused on process and extension, where process refers to selection of materials, and designing and gathering patterns; and extension is the assemblage of patterns, state of the installation, and lighting. This is equivalent to the action and reproduction that are required for the generation of life, which is an imagination of life woven from climate (breathing), terrain (texture), plants (flowers and tree patterns) and the universe (light). Writing is returned to the moment the imagination of life is born, that is, the time when writing and narration are not yet separated.
The traces that remain on material from wind (rustling) is writing. As Barthes wrote, “[…] the rustle of language forms a utopia. Which utopia? That of a music of meaning; in its utopic state, language would be enlarged, I should even say denatured to the point of forming a vast auditory fabric in which the semantic apparatus would be made unreal.” Ohmaki's Liminal Air Space-Timein this exhibition (Gallery 102) seems to closely echo Barthes' utopic rustling, which is a subtle, numerous, and trembling extension of life in the dark.
Ohmaki's vision is more comprehensive than Barthes' because his sculptures construct ecologically oriented layers. While Barthes connects rustling to pleasure with Marquis de Sade's erotic machine or Japan’s pachinko, “[…] the rustle is the very sound of plural delectation—plural but never massive,” Ohmaki fully expresses plural delectation with his layers and eliminates the various existences determined by gravity and mass. The plural is what is included and spreads on the surface of the layer and bears the traces of organisms or plants. Therefore, his layers always contain an organic ecosystem, and the compositions of his works often point to his imagination of the continued development of life with petals and textures.
In other words, the forms he deals with address the viewer's imagination. The imagination here is about the development of life, that is, turning organic imagination into perceptions, and eliminating reliance on the body's sense of space in favor of subtle gathering and dispersal by letting the plurality of traces that are about to vanish yet linger reverberate in the rustling form. He created Echoes Crystallization—Formosa onsite in Gallery 104 specifically for Taiwan. He linked, or blended, his two series Flotage and Echoes in the form of this work. If Ohmaki's work is regarded as ecological sculpture, then he has consistently challenged the sculpture tradition while expressing transformations between material, energy and form, and in these transformations, has paved space with layers. For this article, I have used “A Liminal Space between Light and Wind” (風の光) in the title because it suggests an organic threshold or a layer in language. By alluding to the rustling sound of wind passing through the leaves, this exhibition may reveal the inner light that Ohmaki expects us to see.
