The Return of Daiki Wakachi
Monday, July 21st, 2008I first met Daiki when I started doing exhibitions in Tokyo, and as he was based in Paris for a good while, he made a couple of trips to visit me in Amsterdam. We collaborated together to combine my drawings with his amazing Kirin Art Award winning piece, Yukhai Zashiki. There are some photos on the cv/press page under ’special events’. I guess reading the article again after so long has made me nostalgic, but for those who saw one of the two performances we did together in A’dam, This here’s the best description of what the piece actually means, methinks.
So go check out the link to see photos, and just for the hell of it, here’s the text that was originally conceived by Izumi at Gallery Ef. My role in the article should officialy be described as ‘linguistical contributative fluffer’….
Performance | Melting Cube Salon “Yuhkai Zashiki”
K12 Galerie Bregenz
Daiki Wakachi | Japan
Born in 1953. Graduate of Shimane University. After having barely survived a serious illness when he was still in school, the issue of life and death has become a central question to him. Before moving to France in 1986 where he graduated from Orléans Academy of Art, he taught at a Junior High School for 5 years. Rather than on painting as such, his special focus was the materials which are directly linked to life itself (such as blood). This is still true for his work today. In creating the experience of being able to witness his works of art melt away and disintegrate he draws his public into the central themes of his work: time, life, death, communication.
LINK | Daiki Wakachi
The Chinese character “to sit” contains various elements that connote rather specific circumstances, which is interesting due to their variance with our usual concepts of what it means “to sit”.
The character’s radical indicates a roof, while beneath there are two human shapes sat facing each other on a raised platform, evidently engaged in some ancient ceremony. In this particular etymology, “to sit” is something not to be done alone, but an action to be shared with our fellow beings under spiritual pretext. This principle is what has gathered us here to witness Daiki Wakachi’s Zashiki.
A frost-covered cube is placed at the centre of our especial dais, which is a large piece of white fabric. Our tension joins the object’s steam in the swirling air as we anticipate an outcome for which our imaginations have no frame of reference.
As the air explores this mysterious hexahedron through the cascading spirals of humidity created just above it, the original deep red colour of the cube begins to emerge from the crystalline veneer. A solitary grain falls away from the form, leaving a particular trail behind as it rolls away.
It is a trail of pigs’ blood.
This ambitious orb is in fact the first of thousands of Pachinko balls encased in this microcosmic monolith; and it is the first to break the anticipatory mood. Soon another silver sphere is loosened enough to fall, hit the fabric and trace another vermillion path across the virgin plane.
There is a dull sound as rivulets of blood drip into the fabric, and tinny clanging as the pachinko balls careen a quantum pattern over the surface.
Blood: this universal conductor of life has brought us together in Zashiki, ascribing our various thoughts, concerns and topics-of-the-day we’ve been bearing onto this speculative metaphor revealing itself to us.
The final collapse is more spectacular than expected – that such a defined shape could transform in to such a random and jagged portrait – drawn by the substance that carries the very basis of our corporeality.
Wakachi raises the question: What if this cube was comprised of all of our blood, collected and mixed in advance? Would we feel differently about the process? Would there be fear at witnessing the inevitable fate of matter played out using the essential viscid that courses through our veins?
Yuhkai Zashiki is dependent on the variables of time, space and temperature. The constants in this equation are the people that “to sit” and observe.
Daiki Wakachi has held over one hundred Zashiki performances, and looks forward to achieving the true understanding of what the original concept of “sitting” entails. With each staging comes a new glean on what it means to be a human being living in this universe and thus subject to its laws.
translation: Dave Besseling
