A japanese artist at the Paper Festival in Duszniki wind mandala and reincarnating shirts

The 2013 Paper Festival had a very distinct Japanese trait. Predominantly due to Yasa Suzuki – a photographer, professor at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. The vernissages of his works took place on Saturday 27 June. The exhibition promoter and commissioner was Prof. Jerzy Olek, a fine artist and theorist involved with photography and multimedia art.

Yasu Suzuka underlines that his inspiration comes from eastern philosophy and spiritualism. “The theme for my photographs is a cycle, reincarnation, symbiosis and peace. Life born from the sea grows due to the grace of the sun and exists in nature in symbiosis with other creatures to finally return to Mother Nature. I want to express the essence of that cycle through my art and touch not the visible but the invisible” – in the photographer’s own words.

To take photographs for the “Wind mandala”, the artists constructed a large scale pinhole camera by himself.  He used the ancient camera obscura technique, but used a computer controlled drill for the conical hole in the aluminium front plate of the camera. The images obtained in such manner are soft, with gentle contrasts, slightly blurred and pastel colours. And that’s what Yasu Suzuki’s photographs are like. The effects are magnified by the use of hand pressed paper, made using an old Japanese washi technique, especially developed by the artist together with the workshop.

Apart from the lovely photograms, Yasu Suzuka presents a series of “portrait” shirts, which he named “Reincarnating shirts – shirt’s Nirvana”. The works included pieces made using the shirts of Jan Miodek and Wojciech Malajkat.

Before the age of cheap mass production, fabric was a thing of value. Clothes would be used for ages, repairs and alterations were means to prolong their life. Today we just buy new and dispose of the old. Yasu Suzuka decided to inject new life into shirts, to make them valuable by transforming into art, to extract beauty from them. He leaves the collar and sections with buttons intact and reverts the rest to its primary state, or pure cotton or silk.  He uses Japanese techniques for making washi paper (hand pressed Japanese paper) and then sculpts the material to his chosen form.

The artist presented his workshop even before the vernissages. In front of an audience he created a “portrait” from a shirt which belonged to Korneliusz Pacuda, a famous journalist and music critic. Before commencing his work the Japanese artists said a Buddhist prayer, so that his work assumed an appropriate spiritual dimension.

Works by Yasu Suzuki will be displayed at the Museum of Papermaking throughout 2013 summer holidays.