New York
Howard Scott Gallery
At first glance, one might mistake Hiroyuki Okumura’s stone forms for a return to Surrealist sculpture, with comparisons ranging from Hans Arp to David Hare. But after taking the time to examine his machine- and hand-worked protrusions and indentations, one realizes that they have little in common with Surrealism or, for that matter, with Expressionism. Instead, Okumura’s elegant sculptures reveal the emergence of nature as a state of mind and an emptiness far removed from the linguistic concept of absence as applied to 20th-century, Western aesthetics. Two important works included in Okumura’s recent show “Nest of Wind” illustrate this concept. The first, carved from volcanic rock (basalt) and carrying the same title as the exhibition, appears to laminate a large, but unknown machine part into the stone, as if it had been encased by flowing lava. Nest of Wind implies that culture and nature are not oppositional, but two elements inextricably bound to one another… see the entire review in the print version of November’s Sculpture magazine.
