Shiro No Nagare (Stream of White)

With the fall of totalitarianism following World War II, artists around the world began to support arts with a more liberal attitude. As European and American Abstract Expressionism prevailed across the world, 'Gutai' (Embodiment) started to take root in 1954 in post-WWII Japan, thanks to Jiro Yoshirara's tireless campaign. Gutai integrated the spirit of Western Abstract Art with Japanese cultural legacies, and stayed on the quest for breakthroughs to challenge the boundaries of artistic freedoms and expressions.

Gutai artists achieve incredible aesthetics with the unique properties of mediums through Automatism. Untitled (Lot 79) by Chiyu Uemae features an exquisite abstract piece of cross-stitch. The black fabric complements fine, white threads. When viewed from afar, they resemble the dense under-glaze bubbles on the Japanese black mottled glaze tea vessel. The Chinese tea culture of Song Dynasty has had a profound influence on Japan. That said, Untitled reminds the viewer of the Jian 'Silver Hare's Fur' tea bowl of the Song period. The artist, while intensely focused on the production of the piece, is 'transported' to the state of Zazen. Everything else fades into oblivion, and one discovers his true selfhood. Stitch after stitch, and thread after thread, Chiyu Uemae repeats the same motion, and the process becomes highly personal. The two fine, horizontal threads in the piece rip the silence apart. They look ostensibly 'disruptive' to the work's cohesiveness, mirroring the perfect artistic soulfulness in imperfection that is the very definition of Gutai.
The quest for harmony and union between man and nature represents Gutai's interpretation of Zen and Eastern aesthetics. The blue symbolises nature, and French abstractionist Yves Klein, heavily influenced by Japanese Zen philosophies, applied sweeps of blue to his works, allowing the colour to guide his creative journey. His Anthropom?trie sans titre (ANT 49) (fig. 2), produced in 1960, features splashes of blue. Compared with the void in the background, blue is the eternal prima donna. Gutai art was often about breaking the rules. The representation of blue in Shiro Na Nagare (Lot78) by Tsuyoshi Maekawa is the polar-opposite of Klein's rendition. Rather than making blue - the symbolic colour of nature - the focal point, the artist makes the fluid blankness his centrepiece. The 'void' in the composition actualises Buddhism philosophies. Guided by Eastern visual aesthetics, the studies of Zen also uphold the worldview of 'futility of all things' through ink art (fig. 3). Tsuyoshi Maekawa spotlights this worldview in his work through mixed mediums, so the piece is more than a mere oil or colour production. This presentation honours the similarity between Gutai art and Western abstract art: the sky's the limit.