Yesterday was a great field-trip day. We drove out of the city to visit sculptor Masaji Asaga and his Rock Museum in Kameoka. In Oulu where Im from the name would suggest something else but here it is 100% rock. Beautiful as well. He is running a residency program there as well for stone sculptors and has done workshops on how to make tools for rock sculpting.
Raccoon was a symbol for the region. Their mascot has a barrel of sake attached to him as well. Perhaps this is because they seem to produce a lot of rice here...
Masaji was a master of digging out bamboo shoots (just in season). We dug out a box of them. The plant is amazing. They are all connected underground like mushrooms and can grow a foot/day. New ones apparently popped out every day. Hiroko told me that somewhere they eat bamboo sashimi but you would need to dig those out before they spurt out of the ground (thats also illegal apparently?). There ones need to be boiled with seasoning but oh boy arent they good!
Heres the bamboo forest near the rock museum. You can see the shoots in the ground.
The catch! They really look like some monsters from miayzaki animation.
view outside
The main objective for this trip however was a retrospective exhibition of AY-O. Hes perhaps so far the most influential artist I have come across here in Japan. He was part of fluxus group in NYC in the 1960's and uses distictional rainbow colouring in his works. I had come across his work here and there but never in the scale as I was lucky to expereince here. He had done a lot of installation work and some really ambitious sculpture. The retrospective was held in Tsukuba Museum of Art, in the north of Tokyo.
Below is the artist AY-O who I was honoured to meet as he was signing his book for me. I gave him my cataloque as a gift. He has been down at Youkobo a few times as well. I would love to sit down with him and ask how was Duchamp in person etc. He is now 79 years old.
Below is the artist AY-O who I was honoured to meet as he was signing his book for me. I gave him my cataloque as a gift. He has been down at Youkobo a few times as well. I would love to sit down with him and ask how was Duchamp in person etc. He is now 79 years old.
here's a sample of his work I found on the net.
and what would a good field trip day be without a nice lunch? ...mmm
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