Se 背 (Back)

The artist statement reads: About my work. “Writing moji (letter/character)” is crucial in creating my work. Because it is so important, I contradictorily depart and deviate from writing moji from time to time, but always naturally come back to moji. When there are a brush, paper and ink, the first thing I would do is to write moji or words. There is black space and white space in sho (Japanese calligraphy) and there is “ma” (space/a consciousness of place) between these two. This distance between the white and the black is very important in my work. Some of my works are without the urauchi—a technique of lining or backing a piece of paper by pasting another stronger piece of paper over the backside of the main paper to straighten it with minimal shrinkage. I avoided this commonly used technique intentionally because I wanted to leave the traces of moji and words visible to indicate the process of how these words were created amid the friction between the paper and the ink with various densities, which scratches, sometimes strokes or rubs the paper." This work by Yugami Hisao (湯上久雄) was acquired and shown during the "Traces of Words: Art and Calligraphy from Asia" exhibition at MOA, from May – Oct 2017 (curated by Fuyubi Nakamura).

Sumi ink on Kent paper.

Calligraphic work of a kanji character, 背 (se; back) on thick, white, rectangular paper, with black ink, in various thicknesses and consistencies, creating an image in black, grey and white. Wood glue was added to create areas of shininess on the ink, as well as on the paper. A kanji character, 背 (se; back) is written so that it also takes on the image of a spinal column. The character mainly covers the right side of the page. Some ink is also on the back of the page near top and bottom edges.