KEISUKE YAMAMOTO

In Keisuke Yamamoto’s artwork, the mushroom is fertile and serves as a metaphor for creation. This artist reflects and expresses himself on matters linked with birth, the ultimate creation per se. He draws, paints and sculpts with wood. Without mixing up the different media, he manages to have them interact smoothly in the same space. His creative process takes an unusual approach: “The creation of art, for me, is an attempt to collect many different elements that combine to create a greater, synergized whole. It is organic, but also structured.”

On his canvas, dots and colours turn into the small essential elements of a kaleidoscopic image. The kaleidoscope only possesses a finite number of elements in a defined space and yet enables the creation of an infinite number of combinations. It represents the ability to create something new out of the simple rearrangement of what was previously there. The important is not the sum of these elements but their endless combination.

Despite the geometric and abstract appearance of his paintings, a closer look reveals the kaleidoscopic plots for what they really are: trees, plants, mushrooms, little fairies. Those details invite a visual wander through the flat coloured surface. Flowers and insects, sky or forest, the hideous and yet charming creatures’ dwellings become the focus of the painting, drawn with a lot of humor and numerous delightful details.

Keisuke Yamamoto’s giant sculptures look like sylvan creatures born from the top soil like mushrooms. We watch them sprout, grow and permeate the gallery. Carved out of camphor wood, these artworks are then finished off with oil paint to which he adds texture using branches or matches. However, the final version no longer reflects the raw materials used, some end up all cracked like clay and others polished like porcelain. These sculptures therefore earn the title of living organisms. This effect is an integral part of the creative process with each daily experience feeding from one creation into the next.

The camphor laurel wood, used in these sculptures, is emblematic of the city of Hiroshima, along with the Ginkgo Biloba. They were the first trees to have grown back after the nuclear bombing and thus symbolize strength and durability. These references to the mushroom cloud and the camphor laurel allow taking a post-Hiroshima perspective on his work, even without any explicit mention of the event. The artworks’ tone is cheerful, the colours and shapes indicate the presence of life no matter what. It is reminiscent of Tatsuo Miyajima’s Kaki Tree Project, and holds the same concern about passing on a better world to future generations.

The camphor laurel could also be a reference to the famous scene of the fertility rite in My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki’s now classic animated movie. Totoro, a bear-like mythical creature, resides in a huge camphor laurel. In this scene, the camphor’s growth is more like a sprout, supported by the gleeful faces of the characters and the movie’s musical beat.

Keisuke Yamamoto’s sculptures are sprouts of similar intensity, adorning the gallery in warm and deep shades of colour. Somewhere between architecture and nature, they create fairy-like hybrid entities.

The use of this tree, which, much like the population, survived – in spite of itself – makes us drop the theme of nuclear holocaust commemoration for another one also expressed by the mush- room figure: life and fertility, and with them, the celebration of the act of creation instead of the horrors of destruction. The mushroom shape then becomes universally recognized, a motif as significant as that of the square or the circle. As such, it gives much to ponder, in dreams and in fantasy. From mushroom to ghostly figures, a change is undergone, which brings Shinto religion and its Kami spirits to mind. If they are reborn as natural elements, why not as Keisuke Yamamoto’s mushrooms?

[Text: “Nouvelle Grande” by Sophie Cavaliero, Le Lezard Noir, 2011]

His work is a part of the public and private collections of Japan Foundation, Rubell Family Collection, Olbritcht Collection, Flowerman Collection.