Atsuhiko Misawa
I visited the solo exhibition of Atsuhiko Misawa, an artist who carves life-size animals from logs of camphor wood. The venue is Yokosuka Museum of Art.
At the entrance to the venue, Atsuhiko Misawa’s works were there to greet me.
ANIMALS IN YOKOSUKA
This exhibition is a full-scale showcase of Misawa’s animal works — the “Animal Series.” Every piece on display takes an animal as its motif. It coincided with the summer holidays, and the museum was busy with many families and children.
The animal works on show are basically made at life-size, and they take poses that face the viewer head-on, as if seeking eye contact with each person. Furthermore, there are no partitions or ropes creating distance between the works and the audience, so you can view them up close. Meeting a life-size animal like this simply doesn’t happen in everyday life, so viewers moved around enjoying that sense of proximity. I did find myself a little worried that the children might knock a piece over…
Viewing them from close range also means that each individual chisel mark is visible to the naked eye, allowing you to feel the “skin of the animal” in a very tangible way.
None of the works try too hard to be clever — there is a satisfying, straightforward, orthodox quality to how they are made. They are at once realistic and possess the sense of a character stepping out of a picture book, and the museum space was completely dyed in Misawa’s colors.
It’s a crisp, summery show. It has an intuitive, direct appeal that differs from the layered complexity of much contemporary art, and I enjoyed it immensely. The pegasus piece at the very end was superb! *Photography is not permitted inside the galleries.
