Hino Gallery is pleased to present "A Sculptural Tale: Taketori Monogatari" by Tomiyuki Maruyama from Saturday, September 21st, 2024.

In Maruyama’s last exhibition at Hino Gallery, "Vertical Dream," he revealed a shift in consciousness from 'hither side' to 'thither side' in his work, and a further interest in the space below the ground. On the occasion of his solo exhibition at Gallery Iriya, Tokyo in January last year, Maruyama said: 'When I looked at stone horizontally, the layers give a sense of spatial expansion, and when observed vertically, the depth of time is perceived. I wanted to acquire the sense of going deeper into both the horizontal expansion and the vertical depth. It could be a place where some new form is generated.' Having explored those perceptual positions, this time Maruyama will present his latest works under the exhibition title, "A Sculptural Tale: Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)."



A Sculptural Tale: Taketori Monogatari

Bamboo breathes while connecting ground to sky
Ground, where new things are born
Sky, where new things are born
Hollow of bamboo, where new things are born

A new thing exists as something inexplicable
It moves around in gravity
It grows upon the ground and stands up by itself
It stops growth before it is fully developed, just before stone turns to statue
It turns into something

Then it returns to the sky

Tomiyuki Maruyama



"Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter)" is said to be the oldest existing Japanese tale, and is well known to Japanese people. Maruyama has chosen the exhibition title "A Sculptural Tale: Taketori Monogatari”, because the central character in the story, Princess Kaguya, appears inside the hollow of the bamboo (transcending time and space) and eventually returns to the moon from where she came. The artist feels the tale somehow resonates with his recent works.

Maruyama has been creating works "by approaching the sky from the horizon, from the position or perspective of a stone" for many years, but his recent concerns are with a perspective or consciousness associated with going deeper underground. The artist's comments last year and in relation to this exhibition, clarify that he has a feeling that 'some new form' will emerge, after considering a more vast perception of space by further exploring the relationship between the horizontal and the vertical.

Maruyama carves stone while thinking of an eternal space that connects ground and sky. The stone could also be considered a being that transcends both time and space, having naturally been generated over a extensive period of time, and then, through the artist, it becomes something new, before it too, like Princess Kaguya, finally returns to the sky.

Maruyama's latest works suggest more strongly than before, that birth, connection and all things are in a state of flux, and like all things in nature, they do not suddenly appear out of nowhere, but are forms brought about by the very narratives the artist has literally spun in and around his work and life to date. Perhaps, these ideas could be construed as a topology of mutability: one that references the Buddhist notion of Uitenpen which is characterized by the acceptance that all life forms and phenomena are constantly changing due to various influences and conditions. A metaphor perhaps, for worldly impermanence and transience.

This is the first exhibition for Tomiyuki Maruyama at Hino gallery in three years. Please come and see "A Sculptural Tale: Taketori Monogatari" spun by Maruyama.