Infinite Space – Unknowable
Cedar, 8 x 9 ½ x 3′, 2007
Borowsky Gallery/Gershman Y
Philadelphia, PA, 2008
“The sculpture tells its own story. I felt that it was moving …shifting weight.”–Toshi Makihara
The spirit of the performance collaboration lies in the directly expressed bond between the sculptor (the sculpture) and the percussion performance artist.
Makihara feels that he is the conduit for the ideas within the sculpture. He gets inside the skin of the work and expresses the artist’s expressed and unseen ideas. Here he finds a sense of connection…to the earth…to deep geologic time…to the process of making.
The percussion performance is dance and sound, extending the sculpture beyond it own physical being adding new sensory dimension to the experience of the piece. Makihara finds sound in the essence of the cedar, in its grain, in its built layered surface. He uses his body–hands, arms elbows as well as found implements, whisks and super-ball mallets, to create a series of non-‘regular’, open-spaced sounds that almost echo Fuhrman’s process of constructing the sculpture.
Toshi becomes one with the sculpture, almost melting into it. The sculpture talks to me all through the process. Toshi made it sing to me. His sound piece embodied much of the concepts of ma space –open interval–extended time–that I am trying to create in a contemplative space. —James Fuhrman
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