There are mountain of artists who have pass the absolute majority of their careers devoted to a single unlikely medium : For James Turrell , it ’s light . For El Anatsui , it ’s soda check . But forMotoi Yamamoto , a 47 - twelvemonth - old Nipponese artist whose two latest show recently opened recently atMint Museumand theMonterey Museum of Art , it ’s table Strategic Arms Limitation Talks .
Yamamoto ’s work take up from traditional Hindu and Buddhist meditationmandalas — which are created as a form of speculation and sweep away shortly after pass completion — and they have an incredibly scant ledge spirit . A art object start when Yamamoto sit down , usually on a veranda story , and begins to disembowel using a feeding bottle of salt that subprogram as a pen . This phase can take week , and the public is often invite to watch him work . He stops working when the exhibition open formally , and when it close , he invites the public back — this time , to help him drag up the common salt and deposit it back into the ocean .
table salt ( and more often , sand ) has long been used to make traditional mandalas — but for Yamamoto , there ’s a thick signification to the meaning , since it represents an important part of Japanese funerary rituals . He worked as a more conventional crude oil painter up until 1996 , when his baby died of a brainpower tumor and his work withdraw a extremist turn . He start depict in architectural space , using only salt — a kind of symbolical commemoration , think over in title like Forest of Remembrance and Return to the Sea . “ string a labyrinth with salt is like abide by a trace of my memory , ” he says . “ What I bet for at the close of the bit of drafting could be a feeling of touch on a precious remembering . ” It ’s surd to suppose reliving such a painful event over and over . But for him , these drawings seem like a kind of meditation — a way to bear on memory both good and bad .
contain out Return to the Sea , Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto atMonterey Museum of Artuntil August 25th , and be sure to catch the beautifully - photograph documentary unawares below . Or check out ourprevious coverageof Yamamoto ’s study , from 2011 .
Forest of Remembrance , from 2011 .
Yamamoto ’s finish piece atMint Museum , in the first place this spring .
And its subsequent demolition on March 3 .
Yamamoto at work at the Monterey Museum of Art this June .
salinity
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