We can make another future : Japanese art after 1989

97 96 WE CAN MAKE ANOTHER FUTURE: JAPANESE ART AFTER 1989 TEPPEI KANEUJI | REUBEN KEEHAN White discharge (Built-up objects #24) 2013 / Found objects, resin, glue / 128 x 110 x 40cm / Purchased 2013. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation TEPPEI KANEUJI Teppei Kaneuji’s constructions, which vary in scale and form, involve incorporating unassuming objects — typically functional plastic or consumer products — into new, quasi-abstract structures. White discharge (Built-up objects #24) 2013 combines a host of found objects including traffic cones, plastic containers and gardening tools in a symmetrical arrangement on a wall shelf. The work’s attention-grabbing triangular form is unified by the circular shape of a hula hoop. This unusual composite structure is accentuated by flashes of bright, artificial colours — oranges, yellows, greens and blues — which emerge from gaps in the lumpy layer of glossy white resin covering the sculpture’s components. These objects, all of which are designed for very practical purposes, are stripped of their function in this new configuration. Their formal characteristics are foregrounded, though without surrendering their mnemonic potential. For all the emphasis on these objects’ aesthetic elements, they are still recognisable for what they are. Kaneuji has attributed the inspiration for his White discharge works — a constant in his practice since 2001 — to a chance experience he had while studying, when he happened across a pile of dog droppings next to a Mercedes Benz, both of which were covered in snow. What fascinated him was not the profanation of the luxury car, but the way in which the snow unified the two objects — in aesthetic and ontological terms, they were reduced to pure forms under a single blanket of white. The use of white resin, dripped almost haphazardly over his assemblages, is intended to reproduce this effect, and can indeed be read as ice or snow, although its glossy viscosity also opens it up to being read as paint, plaster, or an even more organic fluid — strict readings are not important. Thus, while the White discharge sculptures draw on a modernist language of gestural abstraction for their otherworldliness and visual dash, they do not preclude metaphorical interpretations, which instead enter into complex dialogues with the work’s formal characteristics. Kaneuji’s work is a notable sculptural articulation of the influence of his teacher Kodai Nakahara, particularly through the latter’s freewheeling use of readymade objects, his tendency to confuse symbolic and abstract readings of his assemblages, and a methodology that takes unusual, counter-functional aspects of component objects as a point of departure. Nakahara’s practice was characterised by a borderline frenzy, a restless innovation that saw the artist leap from idea to idea, without ever settling on a recognisable style with which he could be identified. Kaneuji is more focused and concentrated in his approach, working calmly through an ever-deepening dialogue between mass production, chance and individual creation. In this he is not alone; contemporaries as diverse as Yuki Kimura, Paramodel and Koki Tanaka can all be said to have systematised aspects of Nakahara’s renegade creativity. If assemblage is read as a material response to the image saturation and temporal accelerations of the internet era, then Teppei Kaneuji’s sculptural unifications can be considered aesthetic attempts to make sense of it all.