Aki Kuroda by Laurent Manoeuvre

Aki Kuroda by Laurent Manoeuvre, 2002

Aki Kuroda, born in 1944 in Kyoto, Japan.

This brief biographical information accompanies most texts devoted to the artist.

We sometimes find, in addition: has lived in Paris since 1970.

Next comes the list of exhibitions, personal or collective, the oldest of which dates back to 1976.

1944-1976, that is to say thirty-two years summarized in a white line, a blank space of information, which provokes questions.
Let's override human discretion!

We need to know more, not out of curiosity, but to understand.
In 1976, Aki Kuroda appeared on the French artistic scene. We cannot resign ourselves to this simple relationship. Firstly because at that time, there were few Japanese designers working in Paris. What seems self-evident today probably did not belong to the domain of evidence twenty-five years ago. Then because the painter exhibits accomplished works, which demonstrate a certain maturity. Finally, and above all, because if you look closely, there are clues to another chronology.

A catalog entitled Titles , published in 1995, opens with Îlots , 1970. We have just jumped back six years. This contradicts the tirelessly repeated assertions. Beyond a simple factual distortion, our knowledge of the work is shaken. This contradiction does not reflect a mistake or negligence. Let's not be fooled by the reduced dimensions of the catalog, nor its great sobriety. The artist closely monitored the design. Both the very homogeneous presentation of the works and the exclusive use of black and white demonstrate a desire to affirm the coherence of the approach over the last twenty-five years. Like these cloud cloaks made by mendicant monks using pieces of fabric collected during their wanderings, the whole reveals itself to be diverse and rich in elements; nevertheless, it constitutes a whole, it is unique.

Aki Kuroda chooses to integrate older parts. Until then, he considered it necessary to force them into silence. From now on, he includes them in the perspective of the work; necessarily. Islets. A network of curved lines connects an archipelago of shapes. We read in this spatial geography the beginnings of future creations: Ice Illusion, Space Pieces. In this supple Ariadne's thread, we sense the curves of Swing, the more tangled line of Line performance and, undoubtedly also, the very dense network of Cosmojungle, even if, in this last example, the line becomes profuse, while the islets tend to become smaller.

So there is Continuity , at least since 1970. Kuroda spells this word Continuity. It thus gives pride of place to darkness. Another Japanese, Tanizaki, of course, made this “In Praise of the Shadow”. About the lacquers, he wrote: “so many colors which constituted a stratification of I don’t know how many “layers of darkness”, which made one think of some materialization of the surrounding darkness”.

Darkness, First Night, Darkness in Paradise, Black Sponge, The hollows of the ears are dark, Black Garden, La Notte. Shadow, darkness, night, darkness, black; in Kuroda's case, it is not a morbid affectation for a dark and hidden universe. The artist notes and accepts the natural alternation of two opposing phenomena: shadow and light. One does not exist without the other. Whoever seeks light, even if it is interior, must necessarily pass through the shadows. In Western art, the work of Rembrandt perfectly illustrates this principle.

By virtue of this law, it becomes legitimate to visit the hidden side of Kuroda's life, before 1970. Childhood and first impressions, the training, the passage, physical and undoubtedly intellectual, from Japan to France, must have they been reduced to silence, and have they remained without influence on the work?

Outside in, Entre deux, Figure passage, Corridor, Passage de l'heure bleue, Passe... These titles evoke the crossing; they speak of the presence of a “before”, as well as that of an “after”.

Below the titles and words, there is the recurring representation of a central figure, whose verticality divides the painted, drawn or engraved surface into two symmetrical parts: left right for a Western eye, right left for an eye Far Eastern; past - future. Aki Kuroda commonly calls this figure a caryatid. The term evokes the monumental statues, with very dense and plastic shapes, of the Parthenon. Human columns rising from the earth and powerfully supported on the rock, the Greek caryatids stand as veritable supports of the sky. They materialize the junction point between two opposing forces, thrust - resistance. But this opposition does not cause any apparent tension. This is how the divine order dictates: “let moderation triumph everywhere... Excess is the daughter of impiety...” (Aeschylus). From this almost perfect balance arises a feeling of calm power. Thus was created the illusion of stability, the moment becoming eternity.

Insensitive to revolutions, the static wins.

On the contrary, Aki Kuroda does not seek to freeze things or time, just as he does not oppose gravity. This is a completely different philosophical conception, and one which is based on a different cultural tradition. Far Easterners have a keen awareness of the cycles of life. For centuries, the Japanese mentality has integrated the notion of instability as one of the foundations of this floating world. No wonder, then, that Aki Kuroda's forms open dynamically and become the passage through which the sky instills the earth. The physical principle that these caryatids obey is no longer resistance or solidity, but lightness.

These figures no longer evoke the suspended time and the immobile present of Greek statues, but a world under construction, in the making. The Levantine wind: the spirit animates the material, a material with the transparency of marble, with reflections of mother-of-pearl, and which is deposited around a silhouette in negative, this time. But the production of this substance is rapid, even immediate, unlike geological sedimentation or the precious secretions of the oyster. Kuroda is strongly tempted to stop, but the movement pushes him, imposes itself on him. He compares his act of painting to the energy of the typhoon. Movement being possible, action also becomes possible. There is no unambiguous influence from the artist to the viewer. Kuroda requires the latter's participation. He even makes him play an essential role.

Standing in the center of the surface, the caryatid forms an optical play. Guided by this luminosity, the eye first focuses on the figure. He does not discover a body of flesh, but “a whiteness somehow detached from the human being. It may be that whiteness thus defined has no real existence. It may be that it is only a deceptive and ephemeral play of light and shadow” (Tanizaki). We find this game in traditional Chinese and Japanese paintings. Not only do the solid elements continue to blend and merge with the water and the sky, but the latter open the composition into the territory of the void. At any moment, we can regain support on the very dense structure of the mountains, as on the outline of Kuroda's silhouettes. However, the essential thing is not what is shown. We must therefore return “to the heart of the impartial universe” (Sôseki), towards this immaterial space which grabs us and forces us to dialogue with the work. It’s the same with Kuroda’s Caryatid. Angel or Ghost , she becomes a being of reason.

Etymologically, caryatid means woman from Karyes, a city in Greece. However, of the woman, the disembodied silhouettes of Aki Kuroda have no characteristics. Apart from its title, Venus (1988), has none of the attributes that make it the prototype of femininity.

Even when it was simplified to the extreme, the hieratic art of ancient times never failed to specify the attributes of each sex: a more or less outlined chest and the pubic triangle for female beings. Apart from these "details", it is probably, and so as not to leave the Aegean world, with the Cycladic idols that the figures of Aki Kuroda have the most affinity. Carved in marble, these statuettes constitute remarkable geometric summaries, bordering on abstraction.

The process implemented by Aki Kuroda consists of disembodiing the figure, and therefore partially detaching oneself from the figuration. A number of his caryatid paintings were simply named Untitled, which frees the representation from any allusion to the concrete world. In his work, the artist can, here again, rely on an ancient tradition. The importance given by the West to Ukiyo-E prints distorts our vision of Japanese art, which is fundamentally spiritual. This does not imply an essentially divine universe. On the contrary, this familiar art of the microcosm and the macrocosm is commensurate with the human spirit. But we must not stop at the obvious alone. “External forms must never be taken for internal realities... Anyone who tries to convey the spirit through material appearances, only obtaining in the end an external image, will reap nothingness,” wrote a Chinese painter of the 10th century.

No doubt it is the same approach which, in the theater, suggests the use of masks or puppets. The characters thus become symbols, eternal, more than beings of flesh. However, behind the mask, under the costume, the human presence is sometimes betrayed. Otherwise, could we share the passion of these beings who perform on the stage? In the same way, there are few vast mountain or sea landscapes that do not show, on a fragile boat or at the foot of a waterfall, a tiny human silhouette. Because Man is not independent of the great whole, Cosmissimo .

In the work of Aki Kuroda, this Presence also remains perceptible. But, fragile, it is located between Absence – a figure and a shadow lost in an interplanetary space – and Solitude . This worried vision corresponds to the state of mind of the artist, born shortly before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After this monstrous destruction, the future must have seemed very fragile to more than one Japanese child. The future of man was threatened, the human being doomed to erasure, a probable, if not certain, disappearance. In Vestiges (1985), the shaken caryatids rub shoulders with the ruins of a world in disintegration.

Transfigured memory. This caryatid, however, allows for a possible incarnation, and it does not prohibit a return to figuration. This happened at the end of the eighties.

In 1989, Kuroda created the set for a choreographic show, Passage de l'heure bleue . The back of the stage is occupied by immense hollow caryatids, as if cut out of the wall. The statues of the Parthenon were the immutable columns supporting the world. Kuroda's silhouettes become opening. Place of appearance, they give birth to real bodies of flesh, those of the dancers. The same year, the series entitled Futur incomposé proposed a new relationship between the figure and space. The silhouettes multiply, at the same time as their proportions are reduced. Freed from their status as caryatids, they come to life and take over the canvas in its different parts. The scenes, episodes from a mythology that still escapes us, unfold before our eyes. The universe of Space city (1996) is in the making.

1991. Kuroda paints large black caryatids, O3 , Weeping through the light. We saw them appear with Le vent levantin, when the material was built around their silhouette. Against a night blue background or against a backdrop of snow, these shapes which we sometimes believe to be winged, Angel's Feathers Whisper , have the mysterious density of Chinese shadows. It was necessary to go through this, as necessarily as day follows night, which precedes a new day.

Two years later, the caryatid, until then flat, then an empty space in the making, was enriched with the third dimension.

To be in volume, these figures are not definitively human. At this necessary stage of a futuristic and perhaps premonitory evolution, the being, freed from its fleshly envelope, takes on the appearance of a robot. This mutation finds its legitimacy with the sets of Parade . Resuming this 1917 ballet in 1993 was a performance. Not because its creation dates back almost eighty years, but because this event, considered essential for the history of dance, brought together several personalities who played a major role in twentieth-century art: Apollinaire, Cocteau , Diaghilev, Satie and Picasso.

Since the 1960s, Parade had been staged numerous times, with such famous artists as David Hockney as decorators, for example. Kuroda cannot ignore this history. He takes up the challenge, in his own way, but while respecting and intensifying the original bias. Satie's musical composition evoked mechanical toys; Cocteau, librettist, had imposed “mechanical noises”, by introducing four typewriters among the instruments of the orchestra. To define this creation, Apollinaire will be forced to invent a new word: sur-realist.

Kuroda takes into account the initial futuristic proposal, but he does not forget that the situation has changed during the twentieth century. Enthusiasm for pure mechanics is no longer relevant. Without man, machines remain a pile of matter devoid of interest. In the hands of man, they were to make the world a better place. They were mainly used to sow terror. From now on, future is no longer synonymous with hope, any more than past is synonymous with obscurantism. Of the multiple archaeological discoveries that punctuated the twentieth century, many proved more extraordinary for science and for the imagination than the events of a future which was realized in the form of a present that was disappointing at best, and sinisterly rooted in the materialism.

Among many of these archaeological discoveries, we will mention three, located at the two extremes and at the middle of the century. The palace of Minos, first. Its ruins took the labyrinth out of the realm of pure mythology. They gave it reality. Lascaux, then, in which Breton saw only a deception, but which gave rise to a remarkable text by Bataille. Recently, finally, the Chauvet cave, the dating of which annuls previous evolutionary theories on art and, a direct consequence that no one has yet dared to formulate openly, perhaps also on man.

Kuroda integrates this back and forth between past and future into his robot. Gigantic, silhouetted with electric bulbs, the idol wears antlers, like an ancient Uralo-Altaic divinity. Minotauromachine . Beyond the play on words, we are witnessing a modernization of the oldest myths. The god is no longer just half man and half animal. He merges with the machine, and he remains capable of life. Let us remember the sacred act by which, every morning, the priest of ancient Egypt breathed the soul of the god into his statue. Let us also remember that it is to the architect Daedalus that we owe the creation of the first robot, a bronze warrior, who guarded the coasts of the island of Minos.

At the time of Apollinaire, Cocteau, Satie and Picasso, the world of the circus was associated with dreams, childhood and freedom. Clowns, tamers, trapeze artists, horse riders are among the heroes of this society. Separately or in concert, the Parade artists sang the ballad. By introducing the world of the circus, a popular spectacle if ever there was one, into the reserved world of ballet, the designers of Parade intentionally committed sacrilege. The scandal was considerable. Times have changed, and so have the references.

For half a century, science fiction novels, cinema, comic strips and rock music have referred to civilizations in which barbarian knights in armor, humanoids dressed in animal skins and androids rub shoulders and alternately use each other. of horses and spaceships, weapons of carved stone and laser beams. Interstellar and intergalactic spaces have become places of dreams, and of a possible future.

Small figures sometimes emerge at the foot of the immense empty silhouette and begin to escape. They set out to conquer a virgin space, or almost. Cosmosjungle . Because if there are still worlds to discover, places of utopia, it is up there. The first conquerors remain scattered across this vast territory. They only occupy a tiny surface area. Most of this space is made up of the network of their paths, similar to the tracks left by humans and animals on the ground of the American prairie.

This conquest will authorize the use of a denser human presence. We will talk later about the shows designed by director Kuroda, with these actors, dancers, musicians and visitors of the flesh, coming and going in a more or less labyrinthine space.

For now, let's focus a little longer on the images, and more particularly on the photographs taken by the artist. The first to be elevated to the status of a work by Kuroda's will represents a woman lying naked, her mouth open as if to scream, on a sculpted Sponge (1993). Evolution is reminiscent of the myth of Pygmalion: the creator conceives life through his dreams, then he gives matter the appearance of life and, finally, inanimate matter becomes alive.

Previously, the human body evolved among the works, the latter serving as a backdrop. Here it becomes a component of the work. Intimately linked to the latter, it partially covers it. Inanimate matter and living matter become inseparable thanks to the play of curves and volumes, to the mouths of shadow. However, the contrast between the smooth, cold and immobile texture of the Sponge , and the flesh body is so strong that it becomes brutal. Brutality: the term was applied to the objective plasticity of Manet's Olympia. Sinuosity of the lines: these words evoke the Grande odalisque by Ingres. Critics compared the first to a figure from a deck of cards, while the distortions of the second made Matisse dream. But these were painters. They had the freedom – not the ease, because this step was not easy – to abandon depth. Simple matter of convention. For centuries, Far Eastern artists neglected the so-called scientific perspective. They created the space through a subtle play, that of near and far.

Kuroda's nude, presented in an abstract environment, has a graphic quality which resembles certain Ukiyô-E prints. But here, Kuroda neither paints nor engraves. He creates a flat representation with a sculpture and a human body, elements which, by nature, occupy three dimensions.

Dedicated to the satisfaction of male desires, subject to man, the prostitute Olympia and the Odalisque of the harem finally triumphed over the master. The sumptuous bouquet sent by a client from Olympia, the luxury of the objects adorned with the odalisque, demonstrate this. These women do not possess any mysterious dimension. They show themselves in their obviousness.

In the Far Eastern tradition, mystery, whether of nature or of woman, plays a preponderant role. This is why the fog, which conceals, occupies a special place in Chinese-inspired painting. The Black Sponge is rich in impenetrable gray areas. For Aki Kuroda, these refer to the catacombs, to a secret, underground life of the city. In this photograph, the artist associates him with the woman, not inscrutable, but fatally elusive, and who, veiled in shadow and mysterious, never quite gives herself. The hollows of the ears are dark.

He had certainly prepared this work with paints. Kuroda admits, all progress comes through painting. Then, other means of expression become possible, and necessary. Uncomposed Future (1988) and Vert ou? (1989) already presented figures, which we like to imagine feminine, half lying, here or there, in some limited place on the canvas.

In his most recent photographs, the female body occupies all the space, to the point where it can only be seen fragmentarily. However, Kuroda does not practice macro photography. This would be too scientific an approach, which would hardly fit with the painter's habits. He chooses to place his camera at a certain angle of view, as a painter would do in front of a landscape, in order to highlight the structure and essential lines of the subject. And it is indeed a human landscape that appears to us, but a landscape without immediate evidence. Kuroda blurs our points of reference. The mind must undertake work of exploration to reconstruct a possible reality. Very quickly the feeling emerges that there can be no single conclusion to this research. The present deduction cannot be the one and only truth. Let us understand well; it is not simply a question of the certainty that two or more beings will apprehend the work differently, depending on their sensitivity and their culture. Kuroda confronts us with the relativity of our own understanding. Our vision loses its affirmative and immutable character. What we saw, at that precise moment when we thought we were guessing, will reveal itself differently in an hour, or tomorrow. Thus, fog, which in turn masks, reveals and transforms the elements of a landscape, excites our imagination. By virtue of this richness, it constitutes the essential element of ancient Chinese painting.

In Kuroda's photography, the model takes on a non-figurative appearance. The abstraction-figuration process is strictly reversed. But, beyond the differences in technique and composition, the idea remains the same. Aki Kuroda plays with the delicate balance between figurative and non-figurative. One cannot exist without the other. In Japanese tradition, such cohabitation is not surprising. Centuries-old calligraphies combine in a unique space naturalistic representations, herbs, flowers, rocks, and pure geometric shapes, squares made even more abstract by the use of gold. Faced with this Far Eastern wisdom, certainties dissolve. The virulent and exclusive activism of Western artists in favor of one party or the other seems somewhat naive.

It's time to get back to our optics game. If it moves towards one or the other of the sides, towards this "before" and this "after", the eye encounters a material, more or less dense, but which, this time, obstructs it.

We must focus on what stops our gaze, on this periphery of the passage. We need to illuminate the gray areas, a word that has many meanings in French. We will remember three: first dark part, then human form of which we can only distinguish the outlines, and finally ghost. All three are illustrated by Aki Kuroda's figures. We have talked enough about the specter. The dark areas are childhood and youth. The human form would be the artist himself, known through rare photographic portraits, always in black and white, and where sometimes he is even in movement, which makes it impossible to distinguish his features. We could say that, to understand the environment, in the geometric sense of the term, we must first be interested in the environment. It is difficult, in this case, to escape certain commonplaces. The influence of the historical-socioeconomic environment on the artist is one of these. However, we cannot neglect it. A person can live in a very withdrawn manner, feeling only a very moderate interest in society. There will be no less interaction of the environment on the individual, and vice versa.

Aki Kuroda does not belong to the category of people withdrawn from the world. He shows great curiosity about what surrounds him. Proof of this is his taste for squares and cafes, as places of conviviality.

Curiosity is a trait shared by many Japanese, some will argue, a particularity common to creators, others will reply. That's fine, but it is not our intention to try to fit Aki Kuroda's personality into a pre-defined schema, that of the typical artist, or that of the average Japanese, and even less so. to that of the Japanese artist.

Assuming that such an outline exists, this reductive enterprise would be all the less successful as Kuroda escapes conventional frameworks. Although attached to the islands, its geography erases the borders of places and goes beyond those of countries, Japan, France, Italy, Greece... We could describe it as inter-island. The empty territories, everything that is between the recognized lands, seduces him, we will come back to that. As for fans of the grass pillow, the starting point and the arrival point matter very little. They are an excuse. Only the itinerary really matters, to the extent that it reveals itself to be fertile in unexpected experiences and enriches the mind. This is opposed to the approach of the traveler in a hurry.

With Red Shoes , it is no longer even a question of the route, but of the means of movement. Unlike Van Gogh's shoes, these are not made for walking on stony paths. If angels did not go barefoot, they would wear similar ones. Elegant, varnished, almost lacquered, they are the ideal vector for traveling in the territory of the sky and of dreams. Red dream.

If Aki Kuroda's geography belongs only to him, it goes beyond the narrow limits of an interior world. He scans the city. City. But the artist is not just an observer. It also mirrors the city. Its plan is not orthogonal. There is nothing like the perfect geometry of Kyoto. Crowded, scattered, its ends connected by a dense communication network, this city has everything of a labyrinth. Cosmo labyrinth, Space Labyrant.

Aki Kuroda does not limit his investigations to surfaces. New Daedalus, the artist knows that life is not uniform, that appearances can be deceptive. You have to go beyond the obvious places, go “Through the Looking Glass” and, like Alice, not fear venturing into a strange universe, diving into the catacombs of the city, even if it is cosmic. Black sponge that absorbs you.

This will be the show deep in Nucourt Cave, Angel's Feathers Whisper .

Kuroda probes the thickness of the different urban strata, penetrates the gray areas, explores the unmentionable peripheries. New Daedalus, but also new Theseus, while unwinding Ariadne's thread, he enters the labyrinth where he confronts the monster who is both man and beast, and who symbolizes the sometimes dark, sometimes luminous forces of life. Minosideral.

In doing so, he extends his chronology well below and beyond the limits of the twentieth century. Aki Kuroda appropriates Greek mythology and, halfway between Conditional past and Future anterior , he questions an uncomposed Future .

Bearing witness to the richness of creation, in its various layers, is not only about diving into the depths. We must also rise to the higher spheres, even into their cosmic dimensions. Cosmissimo, Cosmogarden, Cosmojungle .

We can legitimately talk about the universe of Aki Kuroda.

There is a cosmic gardener in this artist, and there is something of a Zen dry garden in his work. By contemplation alone, we move from the infinitely small to the infinitely large. Initially, few elements, static and inanimate by essence, modest in their materials and in their extent; However, it is an immense, living, moving universe that opens to our eyes.

This taste for playing with dimensions, this desire to move to an almost cosmic scale, appears in more haiku:

It is a process opposite to that described by DH Lawrence in “The Man Who Loved Islands”, to this withdrawal onto an increasingly tiny piece of land, far from the world, far from beings, far from all life. Starting from Les Ilots in 1970, Aki Kuroda expanded his creation to the point of giving it galactic dimensions, with Cosmojungle and Cosmo Garden . “One side will make you grow taller…”

The artist's latest creation, Alice in Wonderland combines elements which constitute the very essence of figuration and abstraction: photographs of human bodies, staged in a virtual world, devoid of latitude and longitude. “Alice had not the slightest idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but she thought they were nice grand words to say”.

The Atlantis series already belonged to this undecided geography: a mythical place, a source of dreams, and which no one has yet been able to locate.

But the Man?

Born in 1944 in Kyoto, Japan. Beneath its apparent banality, this sentence reveals itself to be rich in information.

Kyoto, first of all. A place of traditions, the ancient capital of Japan symbolizes a conservative culture, turned on itself. But we are in 1944. Painful events, which have become banal in their sinister unfolding, prove unavoidable; History is catching up with us, we must take its presence into account.

When Aki Kuroda is born, in the midst of war, the military superiority of the Empire of the Rising Sun is shaken. Let us neglect the traditional evocation of the self-esteem of a wounded population. It undoubtedly corresponds to a reality, but too exclusive. In the field of martial arts, a defeat is less a failure than a lesson. Until recently, in Japan, a fallen politician entered religion. Instead of dwelling on his past misfortune, he began a new life.

Still in the field of martial arts, it is traditional to use the power of your opponent for your own purposes. Japanese culture encourages practicality. The Japanese of 1945 were careful not to reject outright the influence of the victors. They will draw from Westerners, then adapt to their needs, part of this force which enabled their own defeat. The influence of the West does not date from this period. After several centuries of isolation, the opening of Japan in 1868 sparked an extraordinary wave of enthusiasm for everything that was not Japanese. Men of letters, in particular, took an active part in this movement. However, they had accompanied their approach with multiple questions, doubts too, and sometimes some stiffening.

After the Second World War, this movement, which is difficult to determine whether it is centrifugal or centripetal, found new life and grew. Western influence is felt to varying degrees depending on the environment. Even if it maintains certain purely Japanese traditions, such as this family tomb in a Zen cemetery in Kyoto, the Kuroda family is nonetheless strongly Westernized.

This being known, we could evacuate the artist's family. But, it is tradition, when before the fight a warrior introduces himself, not to simply give his name. You must also indicate, first of all, your ancestors. Thus, in “the Tale of Hôgen”, Taïra no Shigemori proclaimed himself “descending to the twelfth generation of Kammu-Tenno, descended from Taïra no Sadamori the Constable, grandson of Tadamori, Director of Justice, son elder of Kiyomori, Governor of Aki, Shigemori, Deputy Director for Internal Affairs.

The Homeric heroes do not proceed differently. They list their kinship from the origins. It takes no less than fifty verses for Aeneas to present his rival Achilles with “his blood and his race”. In these societies, the individual was not conceived of as a solitary being, devoid of antecedents and inheritance. On the contrary, he considered himself responsible for these antecedents and this succession, which did not induce any less self-awareness. It wasn't just a matter of etiquette. We thus knew who we were dealing with, the virtues that we could expect from the man. Let's play this game.

Aki's great uncle was the introducer of Cubism to Japan, long before the war. Aki's father was an academic, a professor of economics, which did not prevent him from practicing painting, but of Western inspiration, in oil. He regularly bought books on Western art. Having traveled outside Japan, he brought back from Paris an issue of the Minotaure magazine.

This still belonged to the domain of the avant-garde, as much by its dates of publication (1933 - 1939), as by the names of its collaborators: Breton, Chirico, Derain, Éluard, Ernst, Matisse, Miró, Tzara, Picasso...

Should we be surprised by the insight of this economics professor? In the West, certainly. Here, art is opposed to the practical world, and the understanding of any true creation remains the prerogative of an informed environment, exclusively tending towards intellectual speculation. It is not the same in Japan, where the adoption and propagation of Zen was largely the work of a class, that of the warlords, who elsewhere would be judged incapable of penetrating the subtleties inherent to this religion.

Zen tradition on one side, Western avant-garde on the other. Aki grew up in this atmosphere. At the age of 10, he participated in his first exhibition in a museum. At fourteen, he presented his works in exhibitions quite similar to our Salon d'Automne. He looks at the books his father bought. Minotaur will leave a lasting imprint on him. The shadow of Matisse, and others, looms. This reassures us; that would be enough to understand the art of Aki Kuroda...

Well no !

With Kuroda, we must take into account less the problem of influences than that of the references from which we judge. It would be enough to just look. But we don't have enough self-sacrifice for that. Imprisoned as we are in the net of our culture, we judge according to our own knowledge, more or less vast, more or less profound. “A man or a woman can be judged in various ways depending on how we look at them,” remarks Sôseki.

In France, we place the work of Aki Kuroda in the perspective of contemporary Parisian art, and we apply our Western way of thinking to his approach. The assurance of our cultural superiority cannot envisage any other method. Thus, Bleu magma would be inspired by Klein's blue, while Aki Kuroda's silhouettes would borrow their flat shapes from Matisse's cut-out papers.

Aki Kuroda smiles at this verdict. His Far Eastern politeness encourages him not to contradict. What's the point ? He is content to say that he lets the influences come to him, without carrying out any intellectual analysis. And he talks about his maternal grandfather, who made, according to the rules of a very ancient tradition, kimonos with indigo blue patterns, the blue of Kyoto, so dense and so vibrant.

Nowhere more than on kimonos have Japanese artists played surprising harmonies. When they do not combine muted tones, the juxtaposition of which can be somewhat grating to a Western eye, they bring out violent associations of pure colors. The intensity of these colors must have been all the more striking since Kyoto is a city of muted tones. What remains true today must have been even more so in the aftermath of the war. Everywhere there is wood, often painted black, and gray tiles. The surrounding nature contributes to this trend: a shrouded light, a foggy or uncertain sky. Even cherry blossoms have softened tones. The trees in the nearby mountains are a multitude of greens, but mostly dense. Only the brief blaze of autumn breaks with this harmony.

Patterns, coats of arms, signs or logos also appear on the kimonos, playing a significant, even essential, role in the composition. “The Japanese have been modern for ten centuries,” asserts Henri Michaux, during his trip to Asia.

This example should encourage us to be cautious, and to a truly Asian circumspection.

Aki Kuroda does not deny influences, nor does he refuse them. He accepts and makes these flows his own. Question of culture, undoubtedly, and which is not limited to the artistic field. Every Japanese is Shintoist. Alongside this truly Japanese religion, he practices Buddhism, Christianity, or God knows what cult. Incomprehensible to anyone who is not Japanese. Eternal subject of astonishment for foreigners.

Aki Kuroda doesn't even worry about influences that seem incompatible. He does not conceive things in our Western way, in the form of exclusive propositions. In the West, opposites confront and reject each other: Poussin against Rubens, Classicism against Baroque then against Romanticism (Stendhal may well title his pamphlet "Racine and Shakespeare", it is indeed Racine against Shakespeare that is in question in his work ) and, closer to us, figurative versus non-figurative. Even Baudelaire, the clairvoyant poet, allows himself to be drawn into this conflicting terrain. He denies any originality to the painter Chassériau, because the latter attempts to combine the chromatic richness of Delacroix with the purity of Ingres' line. This quest, considered impossible, would have aroused an inner conflict in the artist, and precipitated his death.

On the contrary, Aki Kuroda seems to seek opposites. In his work, Dream of immobility and Mouvance coexist easily.

Far Easterners have long observed that, on this planet, life develops thanks to a balance between opposing principles: cold and heat, night and day, feminine and masculine... Even electricity works according to this principle. If one of the poles comes to dominate the other, harmony is broken and difficulties arise. When Aki Kuroda seeks agreement between figuration and abstraction, he applies this fundamental law.

However, Aki Kuroda does not shoplift. Others juxtapose the products of their plunder, and pile them up without order on the shelves of art. The Eclecticism of the nineteenth century in the West, with its inability to assert a true writing or style, illustrates this heterogeneous plunder. Aki Kuroda cultivates and orders. He knows that a garden becomes a world that is all the more attractive when it is rich, varied and unexpected. He works on his influences with a skill that could pass for negligence, and without departing from a certain fantasy. The puns that punctuate the titles of his works betray a keen sense of humor, Green or? Self-deprecation is not absent in those who do not hesitate to sign “Aki Kurodada”. Laughter is an essential component of Buddhism, and particularly Zen.

These smiles, this ease, do not mean that maturation takes place without difficulties. We ignore the tensions, the heartbreaks, the violence it generates. A few clues make us aware of this. Ultimate Stress, Weeping trough the Light, as well as the annotations made on several Cosmogarden drawings: Contradiction, Complexity, Chaos.

Indeed, the margin of safety is narrow, nothing guarantees success and chaos threatens.

Japanese, Aki Kuroda can only be sensitive to telluric activity, to the silent forces which animate and shake the earth's crust. Stromboli, Earthquake, Under the Volcano, Atlantis, L'Ultima Notte a Pompei , and this attraction for an Aegean mythology so strongly linked to volcanism, tidal waves, earthquakes... Without forgetting these Meteorite showers ) who always threaten us.

Forging, a technique in which Japanese craftsmen have long established themselves, is an activity traditionally associated with underground forces and magic. The workshops of Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, are located under the volcanoes. A Japanese sword requires conflicting qualities: to be rigid and unbreakable, therefore wide, but also to have great cutting power, therefore extremely thin. To combine such properties, the Japanese blacksmith undertakes complex work.

Not only will he make his charcoal, but he mixes different qualities of metal, he forges the envelope, folds, refolds, slashes the steel several times in order to purify it of its impurities, uses the clay, and , the ultimate test, quenches the burning steel in water. That's not all. The sword is there, but encased in a matrix of slag. It must be polished once, roughly. Then we proceed to the actual polishing, nine essential steps, themselves subdivided into different stages. Only then will the blade have acquired its sharpness. At the end of a true alchemy, the composite elements became a perfect creation, absolutely original, and totally coherent.

A parallel can be drawn between the work of the blacksmith and the process of assimilation of other cultures by Japan. Historically, this power of assimilation was the strength and originality of the Land of the Rising Sun. Creating an original civilization on the outskirts of the world, when you have the immense and powerful Middle Kingdom – China – as a neighbor was a challenge. The Japanese rose to the challenge with dignity. The rise of Tchan, the religion of a modest Buddhist sect, which became Zen after its appropriation by the Japanese military class, is one of the best examples.

Surprisingly, the products of this new culture do not possess any bastard character. They look authentic and natural, and bear no trace of effort. A saber blade appears perfectly homogeneous. However, it is made of different metals. To make steel, the materials must be subjected to certain forms of violence. Without this brutality, the metal could not acquire the required hardness. Similarly, the assimilation of other sculptures by the Japanese islanders was undoubtedly difficult, even painful. Many writings from the twentieth century express the doubts, questions, concerns and melancholy of writers, faced with the assimilation of Western culture by Japanese society.

Some intellectuals feared acculturation, leveling. There were movements, more or less virulent, of rejection, but not only of the newly imported culture. Back to Kuroda. He belongs to this generation of Japanese born at the end of the Second World War. Having reached adulthood (the tsunami does not occur during the earthquake, it comes afterwards), many of these young people question the ancient values ​​which allowed the conflict, and its horror. Doubt enters some minds. To make such a reflection when you belong to a society with such immoderate respect for tradition requires a lot of courage. In the mid-sixties, the ferment was intense, which gave rise to internal conflicts and various forms of violence. We must make a clean slate of the past. The past, for Kuroda, is painting.

For five years, he abandoned painting. Essentially, a creator loves to build. Kuroda cannot therefore be satisfied with pure destruction. He is looking for alternatives to this Japanese culture from which he wants to separate. He will find them both in French culture, particularly in its Dadaist and Surrealist components, and in the American movement of the beat generation.

In 1965, Kuroda prepared to leave for France with, as a pretext, a thesis subject on Picabia. He will never complete this job. He will not even consider it useful to pass through the doors of a library. He prefers to look at the city, its atmosphere and its lights. After six months, he extended this trip with a stay in the United States. Before his departure, he presented a happening in Kyoto, Dream of a Fetus . Placed in its context, this powerful work testifies to a feeling of perdition. From a huge plastic bag emerge characters connected to the placenta by a symbolic thread. Armed with clubs, they rush towards the spectators, attack them and molest them. The violence of this representation can be explained quite well in the very tense circumstances of the time. Let us not stop at the forms of this manifestation linked to particular factors, which we could almost describe as anecdotal. Let us already notice how the spectator is taken advantage of. This would be a constant in Kuroda's later works. Let us also see, in this Dream of a Fetus , the oldest of the shows designed by the artist. In 1965, Kuroda used spectacle as a means of negating painting. Today, he considers other forms of expression essential, complementary to painting. It is not just a question of drawing or engraving. For years, Kuroda has likened these techniques to an extension of painting, undoubtedly because they are in two dimensions, and because they allow a somewhat similar treatment of the same theme.

We have already mentioned Kuroda's sculptures. During his second stay in Paris, in 1970, he was the practitioner of a Japanese sculptor. It was then a matter of cutting the stone. This painful work, physically very hard, and which he describes as "bad for the mind", does not appeal to Kuroda. However, sculpture is a way to conquer the third dimension, and to play with light. He cannot therefore neglect it. The hollowed-out decor of Passage de l'heure bleue is a first attempt to adapt this technique to his concerns.

Kuroda is more concerned with conquering space than confronting matter. He even tends to neglect it. He reduces it to surfaces, sometimes smooth, lacquered in appearance, and relatively flat. He transposes his pictorial space into volume. As early as 1989, the title given to the Sundial installation in Troyes said that there was not fracture, but Continuity .

We have already talked about this female body lying on a black sponge . Sometimes, Kuroda installs on these sculptures, symbols of the city, objects of daily life, dishes, toys... He connects the different sculptures by a network of real threads, and no longer graphic ones. These breadcrumbs, the presence of a miniature bull on a sculpted sponge , show that there is no divide between painting and sculpture. The theme is similar. Kuroda opens up different perspectives, not only through the use of three dimensions, but also through a change of scale. Whether the perspective is illusionistic, as in the West, or a play of “near and far,” as in the Far East, the feeling of space is above all a matter of proportions. The monumental bull of Minosidereal is reduced to the proportions of a figurine, while Blue Note becomes a labyrinthine space, and not simply a surface. Kuroda offers us another look, a different point of view, on the same world.

Having opened the space to this point, Kuroda will seek to push its boundaries ever further, even if it means abandoning, temporarily, his title of painter. For most art historians, the fact that Velazquez, “the painter of painters” according to Manet, abandoned painting to devote himself to decorating royal palaces and staging official ceremonies, remains incomprehensible. This lack of intelligence stems from a logic tending to reduce the definition and role of the artist. In the West, the artist is an aristocrat. It should not be confused with the plebs of artisans. Even if the terms are hardly used anymore, the old categories of fine and minor arts – we now prefer the less derogatory name of decorative arts – continue to permeate mentalities. The distinction between artist and craftsman sometimes turns out to be delicate, and rather theoretical. Contemporary dictionaries offer careful definitions, but which hardly satisfy the amateur of precision. In Japan, an artist is considered to be anyone capable of arousing aesthetic pleasure in their peers, and of improving their environment. The artist permeates life and assumes the presence of art in the material world. Or more precisely, it elevates the material world through aesthetics. A cook can therefore legitimately claim the title of artist. Aware of this influence of aesthetics in the concrete, Tanizaki wrote: “what we call beauty is usually only a sublimation of the realities of life”. Despite his harsh judgment on Japan, the barbarian Michaux had perceived the aesthetic dimension of this country, and he had been sensitive to it. In such a context, the notion of the decorative – this peril that gives nightmares to Western artists – loses all pejorative meaning. Furthermore, the notion of art broadens considerably, and discussions as to whether photography, cinema or comics really fall within this domain, become useless.

So, painter, Aki Kuroda? Leafing through the works devoted to him, one would believe it. Of course, painting is, in our Western eyes, the noble creation par excellence, the great art. And then we can appropriate it at a glance, identify it, touch it, hang it on a wall, reproduce it in its entirety. Its material is included in space and defies time, which is reassuring. But the other facets of Aki Kuroda? The other Aki Kuroda, one would even dare to say. Because there is the director (we must call him that, for lack of a better term), the publishing director, the cosmic gardener, the virtual creator. Here we are confronted with a new divergence of mentalities between the Far East and the West. Here, jacks of all trades (the very term has something of a pejorative) do not have a good press. Under the pretext of professionalism, practitioners in a field are denied the power to explore a sector that does not fall within their expertise. It is forbidden to appropriate means of expression other than those with which opinion, or habits, have categorized you. Keep your blinders on and don't try to break out of your rut. If you want to have a career, stay on track. The history of Western art hardly forgives Fromentin for having shown himself to be an excellent writer, and “Alice in Wonderland” is often considered a mathematician's hobby. This book is generally found in the children's book section. Nonsense.

In Japan, his friend Kôetsu, sword polisher, tea master, potter, calligrapher, creator of lacquerware and inspiration for a colony of artists, is unanimously admired, even revered, in the different branches of his production. Kôetsu's art is often the result of collaborative work, for example with the painter Sôtatsu, or with exceptional paper makers. Anyone who mastered Chinese writing was potentially a painter. This explains the disdain for impassable borders. A scholar moved alternately and imperceptibly from writing, and therefore from poetry, to painting. And vice versa, because painting, essentially subjective, favors poetic invention. This is why calligraphy is so present in paintings from the Far East. But it is not added to the work, it is an intimate part of it. Such a scheme would promote the success of comics in this country. As far as the West is concerned, the relationship between text and image was often a matter of power and submission. Long solitary, the text has marginalized, in the literal sense of the word, the image. The space of one remained impermeable to the other, except in medieval initials.

It is therefore not surprising that, in the journal Cosmissimo , Kuroda calls on poets whose texts coexist with his works. Because, just as Aki Kuroda accepts influences, he likes to give voice to other creators. Cosmissimo is a perfect example of this collaborative work.

We feel its designer is not very directive. In the first issues, his name appeared, among others, under the title. Now, as with good houses, we simply find the information: “since 1991”. Each number seems a collective. No editor-in-chief appears. Apparently, Aki Kuroda offers a guiding principle and he lets everyone express themselves at their ease, and according to their tastes. Bernard Franck noted how, among the Japanese, respect for others is essential. Personality does not assert itself at the expense of others. We can even say that the stronger the personalities, the less they seek to impose themselves. Thus Kuroda opens the pages of his magazine to other creators without there being any rivalry. However, the tea ceremony involves the presence of a tea master. However reserved he may be, he is the one who coordinates, ensures the perfect organization and the smooth running of things. And as in Greek mythology, the hero is never alone. Ulysses or Theseus have their companions nearby, and the Argonauts accompany Jason. But, as a last resort, when we have to brave a difficulty, or when we hesitate, the hero alone decides and acts. The relationship between the creators is not identical to what is usually expected in the West. There is no illustrator-illustrated relationship here, the writer or the visual artist can be one or the other indifferently.

The works are united by a pretext that is often subtle, and sometimes difficult to perceive. As in the calligraphy affixed to ancient paintings, as in the haikai tradition with multiple authors, as in certain surrealist works - is Cosmissimo not a legacy of “Minotaur”? -, the link is based first of all on an association of ideas, on a feeling, a more or less fleeting impression, or even on a simple play on words.

So here we are back to words. Very early on, Kuroda's works inspired people of letters, starting with Marguerite Duras, in 1980. Eleven years later, the artist transcribed texts by Pascal Quignard directly onto a series of canvases. These writings on shadow, silence, light and death appear coherent with the black and white geometric shapes that they partially cover. This very strong presence of the text, alongside, even on the representation, Kuroda, as a teenager, found it in comics. The relationship between text and image will continue to preoccupy him. He will first limit it to the margin of the work, by the titles. Their relevant, even impertinent, choice proves how much importance the artist attaches to these words. He will even consider it necessary to publish a catalog of his titles. We have already mentioned, in connection with this catalog, the use of black and white, as a means of accentuating the coherence of the approach. There is no single reading, and we can also conceive this absence of color as a desire to put the works themselves somewhat muted.

In 1989, with Noise , Kuroda inscribed the title directly on the work. But the evidence is undoubtedly too strong. Kuroda likes, as we have said, less direct and richer itineraries. In the years that followed, several paintings, called Untitled, would bear inscriptions on the painted surface, as a result of contradiction. We could never stop listing them. Many are the titles of other works: Stromboli, Notte, Ténèbres .

Kuroda does not limit the texts to these references. Spaghetti al nero, Ozone, evoke everyday events, the origin and reason of which escape us. But, as with haiku, despite their laconicism, or perhaps thanks to it, they hold a strong suggestive power. There will also be letters, numbers, dates, symbols. With Angel's Feathers Whisper II , the text (on light) even becomes abundant, to the point of surrounding the figure, which sees its dimensions considerably reduced.

This fusion of text and representation becomes necessary in preparatory drawings, or presented as such, for a show. This time, the words support the drawing, caption it. These drawings synthesize thought, schematize space, prefigure action and crystallize time. The weather. A Western painting can be seen in its entirety at a single glance. How long to do this? A fraction of a second is enough, maybe a little more. It all depends on the lighting, the clarity of the writing, the density of the information, the intensity of the colors. The viewer can then engage in a more or less long, more or less rich dialogue with the work. Details, subtleties, will appear. They will enrich the first reading, but without fundamentally modifying it. The essential was seen from the outset. Painters will reinforce this trend over the centuries. Collective exhibitions, such as Salons, forced artists to fight against the overbidding of images. It was necessary to be seen immediately, to attract the visitor's eye at the expense of the neighborhood, and therefore to create a powerful effect. The massive frames were intended to emphasize this effect, but also to create relative isolation.

A Far Eastern painting unfolds, horizontally or vertically. The kakemono, vertical, can be presented in its entirety. But as it has no frame, it “emerges” from the direct environment, the wall, the architecture, life, from which it never completely separates itself. In the case of the makemono, horizontal, the work cannot be understood in its entirety in one go. The viewer will therefore be forced to constantly call on their memory. A back and forth game develops between past and present impressions. The work appears to be in progress, and never completed. It's no coincidence that many of these scrolls end with a large empty space.

With such a culture, the Japanese could only appropriate cinema; same unwinding of the reel, same fleeting vision. Kyoto was the city of cinema, and Aki Kuroda's father was very interested in this art. No wonder, then, that Aki says he works more like a filmmaker than a Western painter. When he creates, there is movement, history, editing, connections, blacks, zooms in and out. Cine Cita , which combines city and cinema, demonstrates this desire to appropriate the seventh art. But, although conceived in the manner of a series, Cine Cita remains a painting, and therefore at the level of the still shot.

Cosmissimo is a middle term in this progression towards movement. Like any magazine, it has to be leafed through. Better than the cinema, it allows you to go back and forth. It even offers progression that is not linear. You can skip pages, come back, start again, go to the previously neglected place. Everyone creates their own itinerary. We will see that this method plays an essential role for Kuroda. Despite so many advantages, paper restricts creation to the visual, and two-dimensional. A magazine continues to live over time, but it necessarily remains limited in space. With shows, the principle is reversed. The laws which govern their progress will therefore be different: an ephemeral duration, a larger space, open to three dimensions, but also to other means of expression: sonic, olfactory, tactile (painting, dance, theater, music, high couture, perfumes...). In Cosmissimo , Aki Kuroda was already letting people of letters, scientists, photographers express themselves. Noh and Kabuki combined theater, music, choreography and costumes. In their progress, they erased the notions of time and partly of space (Michaux speaks of emptiness) as we understand them. However, even off-center, the show did not extend beyond the limits of the stage. With his propensity to push boundaries, Aki Kuroda multiplies the places of intervention.

Given that the work develops in time and space, it is impossible to understand everything at once. In Japan, a painting is never hung immutably. It should not be presented to anyone who cannot appreciate its beauty and deep meaning. We do not act this way out of contempt for others. On the contrary, it is a way of showing attention to others, of not imposing anything on them that they cannot appreciate.

However, the traditional spectacle is restrictive and, whether we like it or not, reductive. It assumes that the viewer remains seated and only understands what is happening on stage from one point of view. Kuroda breaks with this principle. It does not offer one show, but several, simultaneous ones; a creative federation in which dance, fashion, music, perfumes, etc. are exhibited simultaneously.

These essential expressions of life form a crystallization of the city. Crystal chance. A place that is part factory, part workshop, part hospital, part labyrinth and part spaceship, frozen outside of time. A place of ruptures. Because, for Kuroda, life is not linear, even when there is CONTINUITY. Between periods of relative calm, it is made up of fractures, faults, tremors.

Although they are different, the elements that make up these shows cannot be separated from the others. None prevails, except by the choice of the spectator.

Since Islets, we know that, for Kuroda, borders are less important than connections and pathways. In the shows he designs, the artist offers genuine interaction. He doesn't just want the spectator to enter the scene, a fact which has become quite banal and which is of little interest. He makes him play a leading role. Because who, if not the spectator himself, can take into account the unseen, the moving, the floating world, and relay the information, directing other passers-by towards a particular point of the place? Kuroda thus applies the strategy of the Japanese gardener. A garden is never created for its own sake. The topography, the species, which make up this living space, are less important than the encounters which will take place there. As certainly as it cannot be discovered at a single glance, and from a single point of view, the garden is multiple. Various gardens. Winter Garden. No more than there is one garden, there is no one – or right – way to visit it.

Each garden is a multitude of gardens, because each visitor carries within him his own journey, his personal impressions, born from his particular sensitivity, and from chance. It is up to everyone to share, if they wish, this garden with others, according to encounters and affinities. When two people exchange their impressions about the same garden, a new reality, a third garden, comes into being. Suffice it to say that the Japanese garden only exists through its visitors. Without them, it becomes virtual.

So it is with Kuroda's shows. The reference to the garden is permanent for the artist. If only in the titles of his works. Silkroad garden, Cosmogarden, Space Garden, Black Garden, Winter Garden .

As early as 1970, when he worked as a sculptor's practitioner, Kuroda had taken over the Luxembourg Gardens, placing a certain number of objects there. After this experience, he withdrew for around ten years, not visiting any exhibitions, producing, according to his words, only “one-off things”, fine, precise and careful, of surrealist inspiration. He lives from his inner wealth.

Today, he knows that this fallow period was necessary. Because the artist sees his itinerary as a gardener. He says he planted a lot, let all kinds of species come in. A sort of jungle has developed.

Kuroda is not tyrannical. He let the balance happen naturally, refusing to tear here, or cut there. He was content to observe this abundance. His interest went from the deepest roots – this underground life that escapes the ordinary eye – to the top.

Within the lush plant garden, another garden finds its place. At most a few square meters of sand and rocks. However, contemplating these dry Zen gardens, we find ourselves transported into an unlimited universe. Kuroda, the space player, knows this, we've already said it.

Silkroad Garden. Silk Road ; several caravan routes which, in an essentially mineral environment, go from the China Sea to the Mediterranean. An immensely vast space, through which all kinds of wealth, material but also intellectual and cultural, came from both ends of the world. Umbilical cord connecting the two greatest civilizations remembered in earthly memory: China and Greece. In the east, a civilization developing around the China Sea. To the West, the Mediterranean world which is formed around a void, that of the sea, and that of the sky. Stromboli. Between the two, the deserts, other territories of the void.

Kuroda does nothing other than carry out similar exchanges when he connects the archipelagos. He even goes so far as to suggest an itinerary, his own perhaps, Plan, whose structure turns out to be close to Îles and Ondes. In the Japanese dry garden, sand waves surround rocky islets.

Aki Kuroda by Laurent Manoeuvre, 2002