KENJI SUGIYAMA

My interest is in the human body. I began with the very simple desire of wanting to see myself. My work, 'Inside Outside,' is a negative mold of the 'surface' of the outside of the body. I reverse interior into exterior, exterior into interior, not only of the surface of the object, but also of the viewer's space and position in relation to the object. Sometimes, I place an obstacle between viewers and my work. Although this limits or deprives their vision, it makes the viewers aware of their usual eye movements. My hope is that my work becomes a space to open a door and offer new perspectives.

INTERIOR VIEWS:  1    2

Born in 1962 in Nagoya, Japan, Sugiyama graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Arts. From 1996 to 1998 he was Artist in Residence at the Centre de Sculpture Est-Nord-Est, in Quebec, Canada. His exhibitions include a solo show at Gallery Yamaguchi in Tokyo.

His earliest works in the "Inside Outside" series were fabricated in plaster. One day, as a student of painting, he found on campus an abandoned sculptural mold that showed the negative impression of a figure. This inspired him to produce part of a human body in clay and cast it in plaster. The result was what he calls an "inner surface." More recently, his works have been expanding into the surrounding space, the space of art. Sugiyama still strives to reveal both inside and outside at the same time. But now he presents the inside/outside duality as a question, often by introducing translucent screens or mirrors.