DAISUKE MINOWA 

A.P.T GALLERY

 

 

 

CREEKSIDE OPEN 2019

Selected by Sacha Craddock

 

 

Statement

 

DAISUKE MINOWA

“LONELY MAX”

 

Someone once said that an artist should use everything, including times when he is in a slump. In fact, using everything is the fun part of making art and very much so when it is possible to use and transform something in a slump into something vibrant, as is often the case when it comes to collage. This transformation often occurs in an accident, then it becomes a passage from the known into the unknown, from the explained and the memorized into the expressed.

I found this wooden tray in Deptford Market which I later used to paint “Lonely Max”. It was the most radiant object amongst all the other discarded materials sold there. Its dry texture, faded colors, stains, holes, and scars were unlike attributes of the radiance of that moment. Something harmonious from inside me was somehow projected onto the empty tray. As if the tray was pasted on otherwise a known Saturday afternoon, the encounter with the tray itself was like a collage, so to speak.  Some lively aspect of life was lifted to the foreground because of it.

To me the making of “Lonely Max” was also like the process of making a collage for I didn’t follow any preconceived thought, or even a plan, but followed, for instance, along the wooden grains on the surface of the tray as if the walk on that Saturday afternoon continued. I painted irises along those grains just because the lines of the grains resembled the flowers. Then another image was painted on top. And the whole thing was then carved down to yet different image. The workflow was driven without much attention to a coherence of any sort. I was simply interested in how forms could ascend from the known to the unknown, from the explained to existing, and indeed from a slump.

Finally, ‘lonely max’ was something my wife said last summer after spending 10 days alone in our flat. I thought it was funny. So I decided to ‘collage’ it onto this painting.