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| Etsutomu KASHIHARA "For Avian Myth"1984 |
Observations ~
by Etsutomu Kashihara & Minoru Morikawa (installation artist)
A Perspective on Etsutomu Kashihara
by Hiroyuki Tsubomi (brain scientist)
What is it to see a landscape?
As a scientist, I investigate the mechanisms by which the human brain functions when seeing a landscape. What I do is rather like writing an operational manual for human beings. The manual consists of various principles that I have identified and extracted from people who cooperated with me on research projects. I proceed on the belief that these principles can be equally-well applied to people I have never met but might meet some day in the future: in short, anyone and everyone.
However, Etsutomu Kashihara's work in the field of art has shaken and rattled this belief. In the field of science, we always try to clearly categorize everything – including what we recognize as landscape, or the way a human being behaves as a living organism. Kashihara, though, invites us to rethink this position by looking out into the world from the stance of expecting the unexpected.
This attitude in fact seems quite reasonable. Taking into consideration different personalities, the different events that take place in life, and different feeling at different times, it seems natural that the landscape one sees and the life that one lives will also be different. Arguably, the methods of modern science may have propagated too strongly and too far belief in the idea of wrapping up all human beings in a reassuring net of expectedness.
'A structure that touches the fascinating wisdom of humans without pursuing perfection or comfort' is, I was told, the central them of Kashihara creative work. Though this credo seems to signal a clear conflict between art and science, I feel that, in fact, art and science support each other. You cannot take notice of the unexpected until you has established what is to be expected. You cannot recognize that the region of unexpectedness may not really encompass the whole until you try to look out from the position of unexpectedness. And it is then that you are struck hard by the realization that art and science are no enemies. Rather, they are counterparts, and as such either one would not be able to survive by itself if the other disappears.
Mr Kashihara has made me recognize the nature of the relationship between art and science: that they are continuously shaking and shifting each other.
Etsutomu Kashihara: abridged resumé
As a scientist, I investigate the mechanisms by which the human brain functions when seeing a landscape. What I do is rather like writing an operational manual for human beings. The manual consists of various principles that I have identified and extracted from people who cooperated with me on research projects. I proceed on the belief that these principles can be equally-well applied to people I have never met but might meet some day in the future: in short, anyone and everyone.
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Etsutomu KASHIHARA "Sea and Time" mixed media
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This attitude in fact seems quite reasonable. Taking into consideration different personalities, the different events that take place in life, and different feeling at different times, it seems natural that the landscape one sees and the life that one lives will also be different. Arguably, the methods of modern science may have propagated too strongly and too far belief in the idea of wrapping up all human beings in a reassuring net of expectedness.
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| Etsutomu KASHIHARA "Sea and Time" |
Mr Kashihara has made me recognize the nature of the relationship between art and science: that they are continuously shaking and shifting each other.
Etsutomu Kashihara: abridged resumé
– BA Painting, Tama Art University
– Professor of oil painting, Kyoto Seika University
– Works include: 'IMAGES OF RECOGNITION', 'EXHIBITION', 'MY METHOD INSPIRED BY MARILYN', 'IMAGES OF DIAGRAM', and 'SILENCER'
– Exhibitions include:
- 'WHAT IS MR. X' The First Experimental Exhibition, with Hiroo Koizumi and Kinzo Maekawa, 1969
- 'The Movement of Contemporary Art'
– Also exhibited at the National Museum of Modern Art (Kyoto), the Sao Paulo Biennale and the Biennale de Paris amongst others.
