Sculpture and Mechanical Installation: Masato Tanaka's Art

With the accelerating development of China's economy and urbanization, sculpture, which used to be viewed as high art, is fast approaching the stuff of everyday life. In recent years, many cities in China have commissioned the creation of a wide variety of sculptures in public places - however many of these are crude and poorly made.

Genuinely creative and locally characteristic works using high-tech techniques and materials are rare. Generally speaking, it seems unlikely that the standards of contemporary Chinese sculpture will be able to catch up and keep pace with the speed of contemporary China's development domestically and the emergence of its identity internationally. Arguably, in this time lag can be seen the gap that differentiates China's domestic sculpture from what is being accomplished internationally. It is in such a context that we introduce Masato's work to Chinese viewers, giving them the opportunity to encounter a new methodology and concept of art, which is sure to inspire those who are fascinated by contemporary art and its challenges.

Over the last century, Japan, as an Asian nation, has been located in the forefront of the East-West dialogue. In the course of its modernization, Japan has done its best to preserve and develop its Eastern traditions, so attempting to create a new art which integrates Japanese-ness, modernity, and internationalization in a single firm or concept. One example of this could be the Gutai Group and Mono-ho Art. Over the last two decades, often drawing upon science and technological sources, Japan has promoted many artists, such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Tatsuo Miyajima, Morimura Yasumasa, and Mariko Mori, seeing them become internationally recognised and renowned. Masato's art practice is also clearly based on this science-oriented art strategy, as he uses the international art vocabulary of sculpture and installation to update traditional Eastern esthetics, transforming these from their ancient context into a contemporary one.

It is reasonable to regard Masato's sculptural explorations as part of the international kinetic sculpture movement. The emergence and development of kinetic sculpture results from the combination and interaction of art and science. Not only is this movement based on the progress of modern physics, optics, acoustics, and electronics, but also upon the wide application of new material and media. Through a highly charged combination of these sources, these kinetic sculpture practitioners express their deep concerns about the violent transition of the globe, we are all witness to on a daily basis.

In the Western social framework, art as often served as a ready instrument for perceiving, encouraging, and directly playing a part in development of society. Over the three centuries of industrialization, hardly any part of the globe has been unaffected while the lives of human beings have become increasingly woven within an artificial environment. From the perspective of art creation, the choice of art medium not only symbolizes cultural significance, but also indicates technological level, and accordingly, the extension of human intelligence. From Duchamp's ready-mades to Futurism's scientific orientation, as well as in contemporary video and digital art, as soon as the artist masters the technology, cutting-edge art appears in response to their contemporary social framework.

So to can Masato's art be regarded. Over the past two decades, installation art, evolving out of its conceptual art legacy, has emerged as one of the major formats of international contemporary art. Characterized by free formal structure in a three dimension space, free selection to media, and the integration of cultural sign and visual tension, installation art also forefronts the interaction between the work and its viewer. Masato's work presents these characteristics, although he also owns a lot to Alexandra Calder in terms of thoughtfulness of his design and application of scientific elements. To some extent, there are tensions to be found in Masato's exquisite recasting of Eastern esthetics through the manipulation to high-tech materials. To some degree, Masato's art could be regarded a combination of kinetic sculpture and mechanic installation, not only embodying his deep fascination with tradition but also bearing notice of his engagement with the torrents of contemporary art.

Using science and technology, Masato's art demonstrates traditional eastern poetics and feelings, turning his mechanic installation into a dynamic, almost organic art form. His work could be described using traditional art theory rhetoric, in discussions speaking of its aura, tranquility, Zen, fengshui-like circulations, while it has nevertheless dispensed with the instruments which conventionally expressed these qualities: rice paper, ink and brush, and the contrast of black and white. In this, Masato's art is a contemporary extension of eastern esthetic through technology.

Masato is not alone in his use of reference, appropriation, and juxtaposition, as these all have proven very popular methods in contemporary art practice for expressing cultural heritage in the global art scene over last two decades. His exploration is nevertheless a persuasive case for the continuing efficacy of such course as he meticulously merging modernity with tradition, east with west, art with science, esthetics with technology.

Interaction is an important characteristic in contemporary art practice. Duchamp's exploration in the 1920's not only brought the ready-made into modern art domain, but also saw the rise the concept of interaction. This mode of display seeks to draw attention to the relationship between the work and its viewer, its finished and unfinished states, as well as among its components. This concept was further developed by Walter Benjamin's duplication rhetoric and Roland Barthe's questioning of authorship.

At this point, Masato's art remains difficult to characterise, remaining individual and resisting duplication while being composed of mechanic components, constructed to a painstaking and highly conceptualized plan, which requires careful execution. There is also a very physicalized tension in his work whereby viewers are drawn in by the bizarre shapes and motions which make up his assemblages, however should they touch the work, the balance of the piece will re-align its on a different orientation.

The poetic and elegant appearance of Masato's work, also uses shadow and space as its components, as the work itself in three dimensional space produces plays of light and shade in its wake, so constructing an interactive relationship between the original work and its duplication, and accordingly, suggesting a conceivable four-dimensional space.

From the angle of installation, on the other hand, shadow, space, and dimension function as the practical media for the artist. The interactive components of the work turn the invisible media into a palpable object. Therefore we can see that, using installation approach to utilize ready available materials is a major characteristic of Masato's mode of exploration. This methodology can be seen to originate from East Asian culture's conscious affinity with nature, as well as stemming from a Western-inspired expansion of awareness.

By means of the integration of contemporary technology and art, Masato's art practice indicates a new approach of dealing with the relationship between human beings, nature, and technology. This is perhaps in summary, the most fundamental and pervasive meditation to be found apparent in the art of Masato Kanata.

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