ABOUT

Kazutaka Shioi named both the work and the exhibition “SHA-KO-SEKI” when he held his solo exhibition in 2018. This poetic and somewhat mysterious coined term has since been used consistently for the series and has now become synonymous with Shioi himself. SHA-KO-SEKI signifies not only the works, but also the fundamental concept and creative language that support his practice. Reading the name as “stones that have captured light,” let us trace the making process and explore what these objects are. 　The process begins with a photograph of a remembered landscape. A photograph can be understood as reflected light that entered the eye and was then captured by a camera. Shioi transfers that image onto washi paper with a water-based inkjet printer. He moistens the paper, presses it closely over the entire surface of a small stone collected from a riverbank or seashore, allows it to dry, and finally seals it with a clear polyurethane coating. 　Shioi calls landscape photographs “light of memory.” A photograph that preserves the image of a landscape that suddenly entered one's field of vision at a particular time and place does indeed record a moment of light. People also fix fragments of that image unconsciously in their minds as irreplaceable memories. 　Printed with water-soluble ink on textured washi and then exposed to water, the colors fade, bleed, dissolve, and mingle. The transferred landscape gradually loses its contours. Many of the memories that remain in our minds are similarly indistinct. By extracting an unforgettable atmosphere or presence from a photograph rather than retaining a perfectly clear image, SHA-KO-SEKI can become a site where “light from the past appears” once again. 　The “stone” in SHA-KO-SEKI is unquestionably the support or foundation that holds the light of memory on its surface and allows it to be grasped. At the same time, it occupies an important position as a counterpoint to light. 　A photograph is data that artificially accumulates traces of light; a stone is a hard object produced by nature over an immense span of time. The contrast between transience—vanitas—and eternity has long been explored in art across cultures and eras. Transience is tied to the passage of time, yet through SHA-KO-SEKI Shioi suggests the importance of remaining at the boundary between transience and eternity rather than treating them as opposites. The idea that time does not simply flow away from past to future, and that the here and now is continually renewed and precious, resonates with the Shinto concept of tokowaka, or perpetual renewal. Seen in this light, it feels fitting that a large panel containing 285 SHA-KO-SEKI was dedicated to Munakata Taisha in 2022. 　It is also fascinating that SHA-KO-SEKI deliberately contains a mechanism of fragility and fluctuation. The work does not end when it is completed. It continues to change quietly, almost like a living thing, at a pace invisible to the eye. With age—or after long exposure to sunlight outdoors—the colors gradually fade and whiten. The light of memory, continually altered by its environment, may eventually be reduced to only the faintest trace of its existence. 　Shioi's gaze toward changing nature has been strongly shaped by iron, a material he has worked with since his student years. At university he studied under iron sculptor Mamoru Abe while making work informed by environmental art and landscape. His later employment at a fabrication studio specializing in iron was another formative experience. Heating iron in a furnace to nearly 1,200 degrees Celsius, hammering it, and cutting and welding it with high-temperature flames, Shioi repeatedly found himself captivated by the mysterious transformation of heavy black iron into something glowing, soft, and beautiful. The relationship between iron and the body extends into that between light and the body. Shioi says that working with iron helped him recognize “the nature within myself,” from which emerged his theme of “exploring the boundary between nature and myself.” 　Finally, I would like to add a note about the viewer's “hand” as it holds a SHA-KO-SEKI. The colorful stones arranged on a white table in the solo exhibition carried both a solemn atmosphere and an intimacy that invited touch. When I placed one stone in my hand, I realized something: it was not only my eyes that were seeing the SHA-KO-SEKI resting neatly in my palm. While sensing the presence of the small stone, it was my entire body that searched far and deep for the whereabouts of light.