YUGEN Gallery will hold Shinya Ishida's solo exhibition "Time Conversation" from Saturday, April 15th to Thursday, April 20th, 2023.

A collage of scrap wood from places I visit

Ishida's interest in fashion led him to major in textile design at the Faculty of Arts, Osaka Seikei University. However, it is said that although he wanted a creative life, it was not clear what he would create. During those days of searching, I visited Thailand when I was in my second year of university, and my perspective on life opened up.

Witnessing the faith that is rooted in our lives, we learn the strength of the invisible power in people's hearts. Ishida, who until then had no faith, decided that he wanted to have his own God.

“Unlike Japanese Buddhist statues, idols with a cheap impression are also objects of prayer for people.

In this way, he produced masks that are objects of faith, "the world's mask series." At that time, the material used was scrap wood. Memories of the past come and go. When I was a child, I liked picking up things on the road, such as eyeglass frames that had only one side, scraps of leaflets, and so on. When I was studying textiles at university, I wasn't satisfied with just creating fabrics.

The moment when "my likes are connected" as if I was attracted by an invisible force that I had forgotten for a long time. A life created with the theme of "invisible power" begins to move.

A loophole to new values

“Some of the things that washed ashore on the coast remain forever, while others are washed away somewhere before you know it. The trash in the trash is engraved with a completely different time and memory, and when they come together, it feels like the times are enjoying a conversation.”

Ishida tries to create a new sense of value by creating a work that collages waste items and moving them to another land to create a gap in the cycle from the birth of things to their disappearance. These methods and intentions can be seen as a lineage of relational art that has frequently occurred in Japan since the beginning of the 2000s.

Ishida's works, which are created with an awareness of symmetry by using many objects of the same shape even with scrap materials, have an awakening effect like the constant beat sound, and the viewer will feel a sense of jumping through time and space.

Encounter of "obvious" and "thank you"

Through natural disasters, epidemics, and conflicts, we are now confronted with the fact that things that are taken for granted were not taken for granted, and that we were grateful for them. Ishida said that he was impressed by the sight of a jewelry artist and a homeless person standing side by side at a garbage dump in Denmark, where he had previously visited for an exhibition, and each of them looking for what they needed.

Ishida's work, which smoothes out the gaps in time and values ​​carved into everyday junk and connects them, is offered as a prayer for the "thankfulness" hidden in "ordinary things" and as a hope for people's friendship.