Outline

Sculpture offers greater scope for presenting one's own world in tangible form than any other realm of artistic expression. A primeval mode of expression with its origins in the fundamental human sense of touch, sculpture has at the same time created and continues to create original worlds, by linking the many materials and techniques that have shaped human history, such as clay, stone, wood, bronze, iron and synthetic resins, and the traditional and state-of-the-art techniques used to mold them. Sculpture is a form of expression that "brings things into being".

Our sense of touch in terms of artistic expression is more than the sensation of skin contact. It is concentrating all our sensory faculties on the perception of "being" in every sense of the word. This is not unrelated to expressing the existence of human beings, which in turn means touching also on the potential for producing totally new kinds of existence, and nature, and creating hitherto unknown realms and genres.

Majoring in sculpture means stepping into these unknown realms. The history of sculpture has been one of gradually extending this concept, expanding modes of expression and creating new technologies. At the Department of Sculpture, we believe it is vital not only to study this phenomenon, but to personally experience the materials and situations we face in their actuality. This also means paying attention to previously unrecognized materials, finding new ways to use these experimental materials, as well as traditional materials, and cultivating an awareness of the originality and special nature of Japan as an environment.

The Department of Sculpture thus views the concept of sculpture in terms of its transformation into a much broader discipline, and seeks new kinds of specialized skill as part of this wider scope. In a sense this approach could be described as synthetic, however the synthesis for which we aim is not the gathering of disparate pieces of knowledge. Our aim is to probe for creative possibilities in different situations and environments and search for organic connections, allowing students to construct their own forms of expression as new domains.

Outline

Students’ Works

For more information about each work, please click on the image. (You will be forwarded to the Japanese site.)