Hands Moving Amid Uncertainty
— Viewing Ryoji Morimoto’s AIR Exhibition “Traces in Flux”
— Viewing Ryoji Morimoto’s AIR Exhibition “Traces in Flux”
To begin a little earlier, when I first encountered Morimoto’s work, I was struck by it. Above all, I found myself captivated by the overwhelming act of piercing thread into fabric. What, I wondered, is he thinking during this act?
Morimoto seems to have begun consciously working as an artist around 2020. At that time, he was in Beppu (Japan), living in Kiyoshima Apartment, a shared residence for artists. Through interactions with artists working across different fields, he received significant stimulation and continued producing works while incorporating new media. One of the works that left a particularly strong impression on me, Suturing Distance, was created during this period. It consists of photographs of himself and his partner, who lives in the UK and whom he could not meet due to the pandemic, printed on both sides of a single piece of fabric and intricately stitched together. Similarly, in Interwoven Memories, photographs taken on the same day in Beppu and the UK are printed on both sides and sewn together with threads of various colours. These works were then compiled into a book-like form titled ECHO. Across all of these works, the act of “sewing” consistently appears as a gesture that grasps relationships with others and the world, across time, distance, memory, and boundaries, and draws them closer to oneself.
In April 2023, I curated Morimoto’s first solo exhibition at an art space called Art & Garden Nekoze. Up until then, he had worked with subjects closely tied to himself, family, his partner, and places he had lived. However, in the work he presented at that time, Piercing the other side, he took as his theme the world on the “other side,” guided by the question: how can one feel a sense of connection to something distant? The “other side” refers to the world beyond screens, computers, smartphones, televisions. Onto the faces of ninety-nine individuals selected by AI, he pierced needles freely in all directions and threaded them. This was not an act of drawing others closer, but an attempt to insert himself into that space. It was an innocent effort, in Morimoto’s own way, to imagine the world beyond the screen, not a world disconnected from himself, but one that is continuous with his own. The relentless practice of piercing and sewing, and the traces it leaves behind, are precisely what have given his work its intensity.
However, in his more recent works, I could not help but sense a kind of hesitation. Sewing no longer seems to be a special act, but rather something akin to eating or bathing, part of everyday life. In continuing this act, Morimoto himself may have confronted the question: what exactly am I doing? Perhaps in response, he began reading philosophy, studying aesthetics, expanding his work into three-dimensional forms, and experimenting with formats such as handscrolls. While these developments represent an expansion, they also seem to be attempts to reexamine the very grounds of his practice. To me, these movements appeared somewhat unsettled, a process accompanied by a certain wavering.
The title of this exhibition is Traces in Flux. When I first saw the flyer, the word “flux” immediately caught my attention. It seemed to resonate with the hesitation and uncertainty I had perceived in his recent practice. The main visual, featuring a plain white fabric, conveyed a quiet sense of resolve, as if he had once accepted this uncertainty and was now attempting to begin again.
When I actually visited the exhibition, this intuition was not betrayed. In the front room, his past works are arranged by format, allowing viewers to gain an overview of the trajectory of his practice. Then, upon entering the main gallery at the back, one encounters a video work unlike anything seen before. Fragmentary footage filmed in Arao, Bath (UK), Beppu, and Kochi is connected into a single flow. This time, he is sewing based on these moving images. Yet this is not merely a change of medium. The images are constantly in motion; they do not settle, and their contours are never fixed. To pierce a needle and pass thread through such unstable images no longer appears to be an act of capturing a subject, as before, but rather an act carried out within an inability to fully grasp it. When the video stops and the gallery lights come on, countless stitches, previously unseen, emerge on the white fabric. At that moment, I felt I finally understood what this work was. The act that seemed to trace the images does not reproduce any particular form, but remains simply as an accumulation of vast “traces.”
In this exhibition, including during its production, Morimoto may have been reflecting on his past practice and life. Yet this was not in order to arrive at a clear understanding. Rather, it may have been a time that allowed him to continue moving his hands, even within a state of not fully understanding. We often seek meaning or purpose in our actions, but in the midst of acting, such clarity is rarely attainable. Morimoto’s act of sewing does not eliminate this ambiguity or fluctuation; instead, it continues while embracing them.
The works in this exhibition, based on white fabric, feel like an extension of his previous practice, yet they stand at a decisively different point. It is not that something has been overcome, but rather that he has accepted remaining within a state of fluctuation. For this very reason, the countless stitches left behind appear to me not merely as traces of production, but as evidence of a sustained effort to remain in relation, with the world, with others, and with himself.
Kensei Ieiri