Fuyuki Yamakawa's solo exhibition"Frozen Screams"
session：2022.12.2fri - 2023.1.28sat
2022.12.10sat - 2023.2.10fri 13:00 - 19:00
＊due to unforeseen circumstances, we have decided to postpone the exhibition period.
＊closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
＊winter holidays : 2022.12.25sun - 2023.1.10tue
venue：SNOW Contemporary
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present “Frozen Screams,” a solo exhibition by Fuyuki Yamakawa, a khomei singer and artist active in Japan and abroad from Dec10,2022 to Feb10,2023.
With his expression, which intensely stimulates the audience’s visual, auditory, and even cutaneous senses by transforming the minute activities occurring inside his own body to sound and light in space, Yamakawa has collaborated with artists from various fields through invitation from all over the world.
In this exhibition, he will showcase eight tableaus which he presented this year from the viewpoint of “Screamology,” at an art space in Mito, Ibaraki, Japan, as well as new works. Seeing canvas not as a support but as a “resonator,” he replays human screams made in social and political contexts towards a canvas covered with marble particles, and then solidifies the patterns emerging from the vibrations with resin.
This “Frozen Scream” is the very first painting series by Yamakawa, who has consistently worked with “voice” and “body.”
Artist Statement
Fuyuki Yamakawa
Somehow, I decided to create “paintings” after all this time. The motif is a “scream.”
Edvard Munch is probably the first artist to recall when it comes to a painter who depicted a scream. However, I did not intend to depict it on canvas as Munch did. Rather, my focus was to freeze the scream that was once uttered by someone somewhere and to crystallize it as a painting. To paraphrase James Fraser's logic, painting is not an analogical spell according to the law of analogy, but an infectious spell according to the law of contact.
Anger, lamentation, delight, fear, pain, suffering, surprise, pleasure, or frustration... When we reach a state of mind beyond our control, we scream. But is it really appropriate to describe this state of affairs in the active voice of “screaming”? We may be rather attacked and taken over by something unidentifiable named a “scream.” In order for the “scream” to be activated, it requires an extremely loud voice. The vibrations produced by the vocal cords are violent, destructive, and disorderly. The tremors wildly pull us back to the chaotic heat source of life once more. It both keeps us alive and kills us. And yet we know little of that voice with the heat.
Aside from that, anyone who is familiar with Western painting probably knows that if you lightly tap the surface of a blank canvas with your finger, it will vibrate and make a nice sound. The canvas can be an eardrum, and it is literally a resonator with the same structure as a drum. I lay it horizontally, and cover it with marble particles to let it resonate a human scream that was once uttered somewhere. Then, a “screamage (scream-image),” instead of a “portrait,” of the person appears.
The “Frozen Scream” series to be presented at this exhibition is the result of flash-freezing the “screamage (scream-image)” from the perspective of “Screamology.”
session：
2022.12.10sat - 2023.2.10fri 13:00 - 19:00
＊due to unforeseen circumstances, we have decided to postpone the exhibition period.
＊closed on Sun, Mon, Tue and public holidays.
＊winter holidays : 2022.12.25sun - 2023.1.10tue
venue：SNOW Contemporary
SNOW Contemporary is pleased to present “Frozen Screams,” a solo exhibition by Fuyuki Yamakawa, a khomei singer and artist active in Japan and abroad from Dec10,2022 to Feb10,2023.
With his expression, which intensely stimulates the audience’s visual, auditory, and even cutaneous senses by transforming the minute activities occurring inside his own body to sound and light in space, Yamakawa has collaborated with artists from various fields through invitation from all over the world.
In this exhibition, he will showcase eight tableaus which he presented this year from the viewpoint of “Screamology,” at an art space in Mito, Ibaraki, Japan, as well as new works. Seeing canvas not as a support but as a “resonator,” he replays human screams made in social and political contexts towards a canvas covered with marble particles, and then solidifies the patterns emerging from the vibrations with resin.
This “Frozen Scream” is the very first painting series by Yamakawa, who has consistently worked with “voice” and “body.”
Artist Statement
Fuyuki Yamakawa
Somehow, I decided to create “paintings” after all this time. The motif is a “scream.”
Edvard Munch is probably the first artist to recall when it comes to a painter who depicted a scream. However, I did not intend to depict it on canvas as Munch did. Rather, my focus was to freeze the scream that was once uttered by someone somewhere and to crystallize it as a painting. To paraphrase James Fraser's logic, painting is not an analogical spell according to the law of analogy, but an infectious spell according to the law of contact.
Anger, lamentation, delight, fear, pain, suffering, surprise, pleasure, or frustration... When we reach a state of mind beyond our control, we scream. But is it really appropriate to describe this state of affairs in the active voice of “screaming”? We may be rather attacked and taken over by something unidentifiable named a “scream.” In order for the “scream” to be activated, it requires an extremely loud voice. The vibrations produced by the vocal cords are violent, destructive, and disorderly. The tremors wildly pull us back to the chaotic heat source of life once more. It both keeps us alive and kills us. And yet we know little of that voice with the heat.
Aside from that, anyone who is familiar with Western painting probably knows that if you lightly tap the surface of a blank canvas with your finger, it will vibrate and make a nice sound. The canvas can be an eardrum, and it is literally a resonator with the same structure as a drum. I lay it horizontally, and cover it with marble particles to let it resonate a human scream that was once uttered somewhere. Then, a “screamage (scream-image),” instead of a “portrait,” of the person appears.
The “Frozen Scream” series to be presented at this exhibition is the result of flash-freezing the “screamage (scream-image)” from the perspective of “Screamology.”
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