Brown Wall 1971

Curator: We’re standing in front of "Brown Wall," a mixed-media piece created by Hiroyuki Tajima in 1971. Editor: Brown, indeed! And moody. I feel like I’ve stumbled upon some forgotten cartographer’s table late at night, lit only by candlelight. Curator: It’s fascinating how Tajima layers his materials. You can see the build-up of paint and other media to create subtle textures and varied planes. The dark umber borders create a frame within a frame, focusing our attention on the central field. He uses line and block very simply, the structure seems to reflect industrial architecture or modernist design principles. Editor: Absolutely. And that burst of something resembling floral lace or some kind of otherworldly coral feels delightfully out of place, juxtaposed with those pale, falling droplets or are they rising bubbles? And what about the thin wandering line structures, that feel so purposeful but elusive at the same time? I find myself strangely calmed, not grounded, but hovering gently in that brown space. Curator: He did a lot of his process manually, which can tell us how he’s related to Japanese print-making tradition. We have a sense of what Tajima was thinking about materially, of his own labour with these physical materials and of an attention on mark making through his process and handling of medium. Editor: You can almost feel the artist's breath, the deliberate slowness of building those subtle textures. It reminds me that art, at its best, is an intimate, tangible dance between creator and matter. It brings something into physical reality out of spirit through slow application. Curator: It’s this deliberate use of colour, materials, and composition, characteristic of that moment when the boundaries between painting, printmaking and object were breaking down, where labour became recognised within the realm of artistic meaning making. Editor: Yes, I suppose in a way it makes me feel more present, right here, in the face of a quiet contemplation of making. It slows you down. What do you make of that thought, considering the processes you have described. Curator: The breakdown and rebuilding of artistic expression requires its interpretation on that spectrum. In short, I quite agree. Editor: So, thank you Tajima for letting the material lead us towards a sense of the poetic!