Our answer to the question of “what do we mean by the representation of nature?” is that our human sensibilities provoke us to mimic nature. Mimicry can signify creatures adopting the form of other animals, or plants, or trying to blend into their surroundings. Here we expand the meaning to refer to our human urge to more closely associate with nature. This exhibition therefore deciphers acts of human creativity under the concept of “mimicry”.
This exhibition introduces the work of three artists who focus on representations of nature. The sensations and attitudes of each is different. The landscapes each draws reveals their individual responses, as reclaimed from physical experience and memory. Each person’s art-production accords with natural laws.
Kentaro Sato refers to currents of water and wind. He fixes these onto the picture plane, and offers the viewer images of nature’s circulations and cycles. Sho Tsuchida takes a more direct route, specifically with the method called jikisha (direct sketching), which he used to strengthen our relationship with nature. Moeto Yasuda incorporates soil which dries up to form cracks as if they were lines drawn by nature itself.
Nature surrounds us from outside, but it also exists vividly within us. It builds our experiences, and when we try to capture this condition, we do so in all its multiple layers. The representations we make are, therefore, beyond mere landscape realism. Through a diversity of representational modes, this exhibition ponders the deeper implications of what we mean by “drawing nature”.