My Space My Dimension 1976

Curator: This work immediately strikes me as a study in contrasts, perhaps even tensions, between control and accident. The delicate ink lines... juxtaposed against the looser, colorful washes... it is quite striking. Editor: Indeed. We’re looking at Funasaka Yoshisuke’s “My Space My Dimension,” completed in 1976. It’s rendered in ink and watercolor on paper. Yoshisuke was an interesting figure working outside the mainstream art world—he was part of a circle influenced by the Gutai movement and by ideas around self-discovery through art. Curator: So, almost an introspective exercise, you mean? I do wonder about the placement of the composition. It hugs this very centered vertical, while still pulling against the edge, implying… instability. Almost an uneasy balance. The interplay of the sparse versus saturated spaces is interesting to contemplate in these terms. Editor: Perhaps the abstraction reflects Yoshisuke’s struggle for visibility. In postwar Japan, government policies often directed artistic funding and recognition. Artists who were deemed sufficiently modern and cosmopolitan received more attention both locally and internationally, yet his generation faced challenges with economic disruption. Yoshisuke perhaps grappled with these institutional hurdles. Curator: Well, I am caught by the sheer economy of the materials—simple ink, diluted watercolor… such a subtle yet assertive use of line. These diverging marks create the illusion of a perspective plane but abruptly stop without conclusion, almost as a playful subversion. Editor: Certainly, the artwork serves as a point of entry into understanding Japan’s socio-economic currents of that time and its global positioning reflected by art policies. Curator: One can read all of these perspectives within its visual DNA, I think, the internal forces of artistic construction with these greater social interactions that give rise to them. A compact work with much depth, even still today. Editor: Yes, and through Yoshisuke's focused simplicity and abstraction, perhaps we have arrived somewhere new, through line and color.