Artist from Tokyo, Japan

Akira Sakashita attaches different meanings to fallen objects by picking them up and incorporating them into his sculptural works, thereby placing them into a different context from our daily lives. The terracotta sculptures he creates seem to be animal heads at first glance, but the more you look at them, the less clear it becomes.　It is hard to discern what the reptile-look creature is doing; it seems like it could be in the midst of speaking or immersed in contemplation. Along with its enigmatic shape, the repetitive but irregular pattern on its surface also catches the viewer’s eyes. The patterns are created by pressing the edges of objects which he finds on the streets (objects that “make eye contact with him”), into the surface of the sculpture. The act of carving patterns with picked-up objects has existed since  ancient times and reminds us of the universal culture of creation that transcends time, and also acts as a fragmentary mirror that reflects the contemporary way of living. The patterns are thus the traces and memories of those objects which were originally fated to be disposed; trash, in other words. In this sense, the sculptures he molds is a surface on which the objects (“positive”) and the traces they leave (“negative”) interact, and function as a convergent point where the artist’s manual practices and the memories of the objects cross and crystallize.

The traces which remain on its surface as a “negative” induce us to imagine the history of its “positive” side, such as what the objects are, how they were thrown away, and how the artist came across them. By imagining the history behind the objects, Sakashita offers us a new perspective of our daily lives as well as the view from the perspective of the objects themselves.

In this way, Numata and Sakashita create discrepancies within reality that provide viewers with the opportunity to take a step back from their usual short-sightedness and reevaluate reality from different perspectives.  In presenting their individual perspectives through their daily lives regarding the contemporary world we live in and the problems we face, we are able to see the practice of micro-poetics in action.