Mikazuki 三日月 (Crescent)

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 gasenshi (画仙紙) paper.

Calligraphic work on paper with kanji characters 三日月 (mikazuki; crescent). Piece is rectangular, showing a thick black brush stroke on the left side in a rough crescent shape. Beside it near the centre is a lightly painted circle. Light linear brush strokes move off the page on the far right. Two square red seals with the artist’s name, mark the page, a small one on the bottom left corner, and a larger on the far right near centre. The paper is attached to a wood panel, painted black along the edges, unpainted on the back. Written on the back is 湯上の三日月パネル (A panel work of Mikazuki by Yugami).