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Contemplating death & turning heads: The strange and disturbing sculptures of Yoshitoshi Kanemaki
08.28.2017
09:34 am
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Yoshitoshi Kanemaki sketches out his sculptures on paper before taking a large chunk of tree trunk and carving out his pencil-drawn designs. He uses camphor wood which is an evergreen tree that can grow up to one hundred feet in height. As he carves and chisels, he draws onto the wood to highlight the details he wants to bring out in each sculpture. He then paints the finished work in soft pastel colors.

And what do the resulting works look like?

Well, Kanemaki’s sculptures include large intricate skeletal momento mori which achieve just what their titles describe—figures gripped by the bones beneath the skin. He also carves strange figures with multiple heads which depict human indecision, ambiguity, the swinging change of mood daily wrought by life like a unmoored boat upon torturous seas. And then we have the split personalities or “glitches,” the two-head figures that capture “the hesitations or inconsistencies” that we can never answer.

“I think that such ‘ambivalent’ emotions can be embodied regardless of whether they are ‘surface’ or ‘deep’ layer by giving the effect of an irregular shape deviating from [the] human figure. The sculpture series created with these feelings is the projection of my own emotions — it may be your figure.”

Kanemaki was born in the Chiba Prefecture of Japan in 1972. He graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Tama Art University, Tokyo, in 1999. Since then he has exhibited his work in group and solo shows across the country, won several awards, and has work in various public collection. See more of Kanemaki’s work here or follow him on here.
 
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More of Kanemaki’s scupltures, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.28.2017
09:34 am
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