Tsuyoshi Hisakado Deconstructs Time and Space

It rarely happens that visitors to art exhibitions are greeted by a roomful of wooden boards. But this is precisely what has been assembled for Tsuyoshi Hisakado's solo show Resume at Ota Fine Arts in Singapore (14 August–25 September 2021).

Eliciting both order and disorder, his most recent installation, after which this show takes its name, Resume (2020) comprises 50 lauan plywood panels interacting with the white gallery space.

Arranged either singly or in clusters, propped up against the walls or lying on the floor, each panel has been painted on its inward-facing side in rich monochromes of fluorescent pink, yellow, or orange. Interacting with the natural light coming through the gallery's window, the painted surfaces emit a glow on nearby surfaces, subtly reshaping the space in which they are displayed.

Throughout this exhibition, the artist affirms his interest in architecture and place, but does so in ways that make the familiar newly strange. A case in point is Infrastructure #1 (2020), also on view, which resembles a fragment of a house in the midst of renovation.

For this artwork, the artist has pasted putty upon a gypsum board in a grid formation of lines and smudges resembling an abstracted sketch. To the bottom right, a hole reveals an internal structure of mirrors embedded in woodwork.

These ephemeral and transitory environments invite viewers to rethink their experiences of space, and to become more attuned to the details surrounding them, however subtle.

Stressing physicality, wholeness, and ephemeral experience, Hisakado's works propose new relationships between object, space, viewer, and consequently, artist.

As with previous works, Hisakado uses the clock to draw attention to the transitory nature of time, as seen in crossfades / 16 SEP 2020 (2020), comprising a clock formed of a thin brass hand that turns above a large rectangle of white paper.

On close viewing, a tiny circular glass lens is visible at one end of the clock's hand, directly positioned over and magnifying the numbers that make up the pi ratio that encircles the clock's circumference.

For Hisakado, time and memory merge into one other. He is interested in the qualities of time itself, and how it can be shaped in his sculptures and installations.

The results are unnerving as they are mesmerising. Take crossfades / 16 SEP 2020, which foregrounds a viewer's time spent watching the work and what they are or are not doing with their hours and minutes. Hisakado's drawings and textual silkscreen paintings enact a similar interrogation.

Lining one gallery wall, each of the three silkscreen and ink-on-paper works forming 'crossfades #4' (2020) contains numbers comprising the pi ratio, which spiral outwards from black circles forming unequal halves. Fragmented or curved lines cut through each circle, pulling the halves away from one another as in the case of crossfades #4 / collapse xi.

In these abstract compositions, the circle is a key formal element that allows Hisakado to experiment with the concept of 'infinite' space.

For the artist, the aesthetic effect of something like a circle is also dependent on its context and audience. Yet the same could be said for the numbers that drip from these works, spread across in concentric circles, appearing in tiny print that resembles droplets or pointillist dots.

Stressing physicality, wholeness, and ephemeral experience, Hisakado's works propose new relationships between object, space, viewer, and consequently, artist.

The value of this show lies in the nuances that emerge in the artist's investigation of phenomena and their interdependence with the surrounding environment. Paradoxically, though, those nuances often come at the audience viscerally as an invitation to look more closely. —[O]