Thursday 27 March 2014

Sadaharu Horio BB Plaza Museum of Art - Kobe - Japan


Installation Sadaharu Horio

Always full of surprises


This current installation by Sadaharu Horio at the BB Plaza Museum of Art is the first installment and is next to the opening of the Museum were Horio is now having a major exhibition of his artworks. When viewing Horio's installation through the window, ones first impression is what is going here! And that bewildering surprise is a  most likable sensation to have when observing an artwork for it challenges your thinking.

It appears Horio's work history from his time in the massive shipyards along the Kobe wharves have honed his praxis skills by scanning around the rubbish of his workplace and thinking it could well be used as an art piece. Actually there is an artwork of Horio's in the corporations cafeteria that a co worker used to look at and wonder what is that? 

Not surprisingly, Horio exhibits with his corporate workmates in their annual show and its always great pleasure to see the exhibition in the underground shopping malls of Kobe, his co workers images are mainly of the local  landscape and then one comes across Horio's art installation that always brings a smile to my face. 

In the current world of art branding Horio seems to have missed that too, he is aloof, very idiosyncratic to the extreme and exceedingly generous, he seeks new ways to do painting, to create that raw sensation of shock on first contact, even if it makes you laugh later. In someways Horios praxis reminds one of the best early paintings of Francis Bacon. 

For example, Bacon's Head VI  (1949) of the screaming Pope where the paint is just charged powerfully off the nervous system on top the canvas, fantastically raw image making, that is undiluted by the artist's need for a slick, clever surface qualities creating a kind of marketable art brand.

That attitude of painting that comes from the raw direct nervous system, creating shock in art appears now to be missing from contemporary art, its been subdued by the business of art but not here Horio is always seeking uncharted aesthetic horizons and his collections of strange objects makes sure his system of praxis is always incorporating something new. 

Horio by collecting new objects to use within his studio work is continually shifting his system of artistic praxis, making his store house of memory broader and more interesting, therefore allowing him to create this strange but very interesting current show at BB Plaza Museum of Art  reveals. So if your near BB Plaza Museum of Art Plaza Museum of Art do go and have a look at this wonderfully idiosyncratic artist.



Bacon's Painting Head VI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Head_VI_(1949).JPG



Link to Sadaharu Horio exhibition at BB Plaza Museum of Art

http://bbpmuseum.jp/exhibition/20140321