Yasuaki Onishi

Yasuaki Onishi

Yasuaki Onishi: reverse of volume (RG) from Walley Films on Vimeo.

“Creation is work that makes current borderlines clear, and renews contours.”

Vertical emptiness fp. 2016
Tree branch, glue, urea, other
Tilted / fresh paint international exhibition, tel aviv port, tel aviv, israel

Yasuaki Onishi creates works of sculpture that visualize spaces normally accepted as hollow or blank, with the straightforward themes of volume, verticality and distance. Using materials that do not retain shapes easily, such as glue and polyethylene sheeting, and working with actions, phenomena and time as compositional elements, he applies a delicate sensibility to trace the forms along the boundary between human agency and nature. Assuming shapes that seem to manifest before us as landscapes of vast mountains and glacier caves, seas whipped up by the wind, or nebulae in silhouette, these molded forms occupy the space and envelop the viewer. The material, turned into the work becomes a substance that elucidates things that cannot be seen, and the space transforms into a vessel of beauty storing up people’s boundless thoughts and imagination. Through Onishi’s sculptures, we catch glimpses of entrances to the reverse of the world in which we live.

Reverse Of Volume Rg
2012
Glue, Plastic Sheet, Other
Solo Exhibition, Rice Gallery, Houston, Usa
Photo: Nash Baker

Creation is work that makes current borderlines clear, and renews contours.
I am suggesting systems that go beyond the human hand to trigger the body sensations of sharing a work and a space, and I am exploring ways of knowing this world and its reverse. Using materials that tend not to retain shapes, I create works that have significant effects on spaces.
They are sculptures that do not point to particular phenomena, but leave much to be interpreted by the viewer.
The countless lines of glue and the air-enveloping membranes of polyethylene sheeting function as a container that stores up my actions, and the effects arising from them, that I have concentrated into the space.
Handling what is “other than it” allows “it itself” to become clearly visible.
By considering its extremities and its opposite side, and supplementing the hollows and voids with imagination, it is possible for a person to find their actual substances on the basis of sparse clues.

Yasuaki Onishi creates works of sculpture that visualize spaces normally accepted as hollow or blank, with the straightforward themes of volume, verticality and distance. Using materials that do not retain shapes easily, such as glue and polyethylene sheeting, and working with actions, phenomena and time as compositional elements, he applies a delicate sensibility to trace the forms along the boundary between human agency and nature. Assuming shapes that seem to manifest before us as landscapes of vast mountains and glacier caves, seas whipped up by the wind, or nebulae in silhouette, these molded forms occupy the space and envelop the viewer. The material, turned into the work becomes a substance that elucidates things that cannot be seen, and the space transforms into a vessel of beauty storing up people’s boundless thoughts and imagination. Through Onishi’s sculptures, we catch glimpses of entrances to the reverse of the world in which we live.
Creation is work that makes current borderlines clear, and renews contours.
I am suggesting systems that go beyond the human hand to trigger the body sensations of sharing a work and a space, and I am exploring ways of knowing this world and its reverse. Using materials that tend not to retain shapes, I create works that have significant effects on spaces.
They are sculptures that do not point to particular phenomena, but leave much to be interpreted by the viewer.
The countless lines of glue and the air-enveloping membranes of polyethylene sheeting function as a container that stores up my actions, and the effects arising from them, that I have concentrated into the space.
Handling what is “other than it” allows “it itself” to become clearly visible.
By considering its extremities and its opposite side, and supplementing the hollows and voids with imagination, it is possible for a person to find their actual substances on the basis of sparse clues.

Read the full interview on Art Market Magazine Issue 24