Shuzo Takechi

There is only form.

Nothing else.

Meaning and recognition may come afterward.

Sometimes I think about what lies beyond them.

And yet, there is only form.

Nothing else.

It seems that conscious perception cannot exist without language, imagery, or frameworks of categorization.

At times, I feel as though I have sensed something like a sign that precedes perception.

Unstable forms, irregular viewpoints, addition and subtraction, editing.

Various attempts may guide us toward the threshold of such signs.

And yet, cultural codes surely do not allow this.

They subordinate perception to meaning.

When Monet sought to capture the fluctuations of light and atmosphere,

when Cézanne accumulated fragments he called “sensory facets,”

when Kandinsky and Mondrian rigorously excluded the object and established abstraction—

ironically, these were moments in which new cultural codes were created,

and there is no way of knowing whether they ever truly encountered the signs themselves.

And yet, form is still there.

It simply is.

2005 Joshibi University of Art and Design, Japan (MA, Oil Painting)

1997 Tama Art University, Japan (BA, Oil Painting)