<introduction> Chisai and this last ten years (3)
My name is Chisai Fujita 藤田 千彩. my job is writing articles and research about contemporary art. Today is March 28, it is....
In my garden, I look up at the cherry blossoms as if I were looking up at the sky. Today March 28 is the birthday of Osamu Kokufu. I wrote about him in <introduction> 1. He was born in 1970, he is no longer here. Today I'm going to write a story about him.
In Japan in 2011, everything stopped for a while after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The exhibitions were cancelled, and economic activities stopped, so we Japanese had a very dark day.
One day, a Japanese curator friend of mine asked me, "Chisai, do you know that university professor?". I introduced him and professor, and then, the curator said, "I want to do an exhibition here, I know a good artist to show here". Good artist, it is Osamu Kokufu.
Until then, I had shunned Kokufu because I was bored that he always uses the automobile and his artworks didn't seem to change much.
Osamu Kokufu solo exhibitoon, Nihon University, December 2011
But when I met him and talked to him, he was completely different from what I had imagined. He was always tired of making similar works and said he wanted to make changes. He said he wanted to connect with society and represent our problems, though not conceptual art. Using automobiles for his artworks, he suggested about our convenience and environmental problems, not its form and material. Besides, he also used plants and trees, they grow slowly (=not convenient), they made us think about natural things again.
After his exhibition, Kokufu sent a message to me. “Thank you for your support. If you come to Kyoto, please tell me”. When I met him in Kyoto again in spring of 2012, he smiled and said, "I participated in the Venice Biennale. After that, I stayed artist in residence in castle in Belgium". That famous Venice Biennale?! He smiled, "so I have Euro only, please treat me to lunch". I had a gut feeling, "I'll be with this person until he dies". He thought it, too. And we lived together.
When I moved in 2013, he was so busy. He had a solo exhibition in museum and participated with Aichi Triennale. In addition, his new artwork was also used for Rokko posters.
“Rokko Meets Art 2013”, poster.
“This is a fantasy about how the car would be in the forest”, he said to me. From a distance, it looks like a car is flying in the sky. Do we need a car? Do we need art?
We had been talking about art every day. I went around Asian countries and areas to see exhibitions and meet artists. He could hear all about things I saw away from Japan, because he (probably) thought "someone who comes from far away bring gift rather than familiar person (by Shinobu Origuchi, Japanese folklorist and poet)". Or he said, "I still have to change" and "I want to study environmental issues, I realize that I am Japanese, I want to convey more messages in my artworks, not material and technique."
It is good for me that I live together with struggling artist, I also changed not only my thinking but also my behavior. That was 10 years ago, my start line for ten years.
~~~Previous <introduction> Chisai and this last ten years (2)