Chieko Kitade (Curator of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa)
For Suzuki Hiraku, the act of “drawing” involves “reversing” things.
In bacteria sign (circle), which involves spreading earth, embedding dead leaves, and scraping the veins with his hands, the shapes of the leaves become shadows with only the main leaves exposed. The lines and shapes of the circles formed by these veins, whose job is to facilitate the flow of moisture and nutrients, call to mind the flow and circulation of energy. The shapes of the leaves embedded in the surface and the color of the earth wary from panel to panel, indicating that Suzuki creates each piece using the leaves he has at hand and the earth he has at his feet at the time. In this way, the ads of transference and repetition take form and proliferate.
Suzuki himself likens his expression to “dub-like music”. As a result of this reversal and repetition, the materiality of the materials is separated off and traces or new images emerge that resinate each other. At the same time, through this excavation-like act in which his own body becomes the “circuitry”, Suzuki makes viewers conscious of, and attunes their sensitivities to, the fact that the distant past, memories, the future, and the vast unknown lie dormant in the most familiar “here and now”, such as earth and dead leaves.
February 2013
an essay contributed to the catalogue of group exhibition “Son et Lumière, et sagesse profonde”
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