01. To those who’s here and there – Takahiro Okubo

Takahiro Okubo

Painter / Sculptor / Mechanic Artist based in Tokyo (JAPAN) / San Francisco (CA, USA) / Columbus (OH, USA)

​Takahiro Okubo is a painter/sculptor/mechanic artist from Tokyo, Japan. He explores the relationship between human and object through building interactive/kinetic sculptures and combining them to painting art or other objects. After learning contemporary painting at Bi-gakko Art School in Tokyo, he worked as a studio assistant to a contemporary painter Nobuhiko, Utsumi in Japan. He received B.A. in Art (Studio Art) at San Francisco State University and is currently an M.F.A. in Art (Sculpture) candidate at The Ohio State University.

  Writing texts is nothing but a nuisance, if I’m honest.  One thing is that I’m not professional at it, and the other is that I’m not intelligent enough to write sensible, witty sentences.  What’s worse is that I am not patient at all when doing anything.  I received the invitation to the group exhibition in Tokyo; I was working for an architecture office in Zürich.  It was already such an effort to join the exhibition, which was far away from Switzerland; however, I, for some reason, wanted to work on something besides the painting to showcase. 

Around the time I made it to Switzerland, my artist friend, Takahiro Okubo, also started his studies in painting in San Fransisco.  He started his studies in architecture at a university in Japan, just like I did.  He took a leave of absence from it and dedicated himself to assisting our sensei, Nobuhiko Utsumi.  While assisting Utsumi sensei, he also practised his art by himself, which subsequently led him to pursue his studies in art in America.
Although the way it turned out differed, we both took a step into the same areas: painting and architecture.  And we both write, if not on a professional level.  We never had a chance to converse as artists; I always felt that our conversations were more like him commenting on my work.  I must admit that I’m still in awe of talking to him as an artist or an architect; however, at that point, I was daring enough to text him, “Hey, let’s talk.”

So now he agreed on it, and we were to be pen-pals.  This conversation is dedicated to a relatively broad range of subjects: art, architecture, philosophy, education or politics.  I was fascinated by the idea of pen pals because they somehow remind me of stories from letters from artists and their families or lovers.  Nonetheless, as I mentioned above, I am so impatient and lazy.  I didn’t think I could wait for replies and write long texts.  So, I decided to rely on technology, namely email, which is technically still a “mail.”  The result was not as romantic or poetic as an actual correspondence but was fruitful and insightful, at least for me.

As I mentioned earlier, this was to exchange the idea, but the vector was instead pointing towards me getting the idea for the group show.  As he describes in the following texts, this series of conversations was “communication art”, yet the initial idea I proposed came out entirely one-sided.  Even though the result was not as if I tried to get what would work for my success in the show, this dialogue was meant to be read during the show and I had to organise printing and binding.  Therefore, I cannot help but notice our discussion was not well concluded.  As insightful as it was, it almost felt like it ended up sharing the knowledge we had respectively.

ATSUSHI ONOE to TAKAHIRO OKUBO
Mon, 04 Nov, 21:56

Dear Okubo-san,

Hello, Okubo-san.

How long has it been now in America?  Two months?  I hope you’re doing well.

It’s been over a month since I made it to Switzerland, and it’s surprisingly relaxing to be working here.  Now I’m planning my holidays for the end of the year.

Thank you, again, so much for joining “Pen-pal Nowadays”, a discussion challenge over emails.  As you mentioned when I asked you about this writing session, this may not be a mere exchange of ideas but a sort of communication art.  Besides the result the visitors would see in the gallery, I’m excited to see where this discussion takes us or how it will affect my future work in two months.

  I’ve been deeply in debt to Okubo-san since prep school (which is now over ten years ago).   I still remember what you commented on my drawings or essays.  The most vivid memory with you was at Junkudo in Shibuya, which was on the top floor of Tokyu Main Store.  That was the middle of the entrance exam season for private universities, and I already knew I hadn’t gotten into almost any of them.  I was already preparing myself for the following year.  I asked you for comments on my drawings at the café in a depressing  mood, but you said, “Well, you’re alright.” It was nothing like you didn’t care, obviously.  You just made my shoulder feel much lighter.

  You also left some advice for my diploma project for a Bachelor’s degree.  I spent most of my diploma semester on writing and asked for some comments on it as well.  Even when I had my first exhibition with a friend of mine in Kyoto, you came all the way from Tokyo to see my paintings.  I am so grateful to be in good touch with you like this.  Having said that, we never had drinks together since we got to know each other six years ago.  I don’t know when and where we can see each other, but I’d like to grab some drinks with you.

  So, enough foreplay, I’d like to step into the subject “To those who’s here and there.” You are literally a nomad to me.  You travelled worldwide as an organiser of the series of workshops under Utsumi sensei.  You were a teaching assistant at prep schools, a visual artist and studied architecture at a university….  Now you are studying art in California.  It is not merely about the cities you live in but the areas you are jumping around.

  Fumiko Hori, a Japanese painter, passed away at the beginning of February.  I’m sure a lot of people know her, and she’s an aunt to Utsumi sensei.  I went to see her exhibition with my friend, with whom I did the exhibition.  It was at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, and I remember many fans of her.  They were mostly relatively older adults for this exhibition (Hori-san is quite popular amongst people around that age.)  The museum was designed by Tadao Ando, which has a strong impression of the bare concrete from both inside and outside, and you may feel a sense of awe.  There was a beautiful banner of her exhibition in the foyer: It is from one of her paintings in which a quetzal, a rare bird you can see in South America, is depicted.  The banner, I felt, was somehow warming up the cold atmosphere inside the museum.

  Ever since I visited this exhibition, her mentality as a painter has been stuck in my head; “Not residing in one place.” She started to live in Tuscany when she was over seventy years old, or she headed to the Himalayas to paint blue poppies so that she could actually see ones in the wild.  The painter, Fumiko Hori, may have been know for lovely and precise paintings.  Nevertheless, her precise way of depicting flowers and birds was her interpretation of tracing the lives of living beings, as if they were all requiems for her brothers who lost their lives during the war.  That is to say, her mentality of “not residing in one place” was a struggle for the sake of her liberty and was to get closer to what is fundamental in order to make records of nature.  It was her challenge to keep moving and facing what is inhumane.

  I don’t mean to lecture you about her since you indeed heard a lot more of her stories from Utsumi sensei.  So, I cannot keep writing something dodgy, but I wanted to mention it because I could see a sense of similarities to her life in you.

  I grew up in Mexico because of my father’s job, and I moved several times, even after returning to Tokyo, which is, I guess, probably why I cannot feel anywhere in my home town if I’m being honest.  Of course, I lived the longest in Tokyo, yet I moved to Kyoto to study at Batchelor.  Since high school, I’ve been visiting Oanagawa every year as well.  When it comes to my pursuits, I put myself into a sphere of writing or paintings besides architecture as an artist, if not much of one.

  Our situation is not identical; we have both moved our base outside of Japan.  And I was wondering if you find something meaningful in having a base abroad as a Japanese artist.  We could say we decided to live somewhere we have to speak a different language in art, even if it’s not for long.  Then how do you conscientise Japan?

  It’s been only a month, but I feel it is nonsense that a nation or a nationality is the criteria for identifying myself.  Having cultural exchanges with people here, I cannot help but think that it was a considerable disability to live in such a “small” island country after a long time in Japan.  Fortunately, I liked learning English, and I don’t have any problems communicating with my colleagues.  Yet, it is not so difficult to find people who can speak three languages.  It is, in a way, so liberating to be in a country where you cannot feel a sense of nationalities (now, of course, I feel the Swiss bureaucracy to the bones, just so we’re clear….)

  It may be because there are people from various backgrounds in Switzerland, including immigrants like me.  Culturally speaking, I am definitely on the minority side here as I spent most of my lifetime in the Far East island country.  It may be too early to say, but I feel how important it is to be responsible for my own freedom here.

  Liberation or freedom is also a topic I’d like to ask you.  As far as I’m concerned, pursuing painting besides the study in architecture is such a liberating and challenging way of living, especially in Japan.  I always enjoy your paintings because I feel the depth on/into the plane, which makes me think they are so architectural in one way or another.  It’s been a while since you started to dedicate yourself to paintings, and I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on the relationship between your practice in art/paintings and architecture.

  This is probably a complicated question, so let me elaborate.  I also started to engage with painting and have been working on it continuously since the last group exhibition in June at Gallery K. My experience at the architecture firm Yusuke Koshima Architecture Studio brought me there.  Koshima-san is an architect but works on painting, scenography and writing books as well.  He made me realise pursuing architecture, painting, and writing seem to be in different areas, yet they are essential.  This is not much of a surprise either because Leonardo da Vinci was one of them.  Working on several art forms or professions makes you seem “talented”, or people might say you could simply split the job.  Yet here we are; we work in multiple art fields, even if they are not our “occupation.” Then, what do you think it means to dedicate to various forms of art for the sake of liberty or as a way to be free?

  I must admit I didn’t know how to start this discussion relay through letters, I mean emails…  I cannot help feeling this first letter is a bit dodgy, but I hope it gets better as we go further.

Best,
Atsushi

TAKAHIRO OKUBO to ATSUSHI ONOE
Wed, 06 Nov, 18:36

Dear Onoe-kun

  Hello, I am excited to start this communication art together.

  The weather here in San Francisco is quite comfortable as the temperature doesn’t change so much throughout the year.  I can imagine it’s going to be cold soon in Switzerland.  It’s already been two months here, and working on my art at a quick pace.  I also have been observing the light and darkness of this city and country.

  I remember well when we talked at the café in Junkdo.  I also asked Utsumi sensei for advice on drawings or essays at the café in front of Yotsuya station on a cold rainy day.  So I had no choice but to feel you.

  Now that we look back as adults, an entrance exam for a university is such a small thing.  Yet, for students at the scene, it is like standing at the edge of a cliff.  We went through this moment when we thought we had to jump off the cliff and swim in a vast expanse of sea, even for eighteen-year-old students.  No one can underestimate their riptides.  I think the state of mind you were in that day at the Junkudo in Shibuya, struggling against adversity, is even connected to your current way of life now that you have made the decision to go to Switzerland this year.

  Now I sound like your teacher from your high school.  Well, I’m still a naive, rootless one, so let’s talk about these old days over drinks.

  I’m aware this correspondence will be read at the gallery, so I’ll just jump into the subject.  I’d like to start from where I drifted to, namely San Fransisco.

  I’ve been to New York twice.  I think you’ve been there a couple of times?  New York is known as “Salad Bowl”, a multicultural symbiosis city.  Nevertheless, even though New York never managed to be at a state of saturation of multiculture…  Frankly speaking, it seems like the majority are white English speakers in New York, while San Francisco today is a mix of different races, ethnicities, cultures and religions.  In fact, forty-five per cent of households speak a language other than English at home.  Speaking anything other than English at home is a first to a second-generation immigrant family, so there is a much more significant percentage of third and later-generation immigrant families (my Japanese American relatives as well.)  In short, the hierarchy in numbers between the majority and minority has absolutely collapsed.  Asian and Japanese Americans are already in abundance.  Although Asian Americans are supposed to be treated as a minority in American society, they are not a minority at all in this city.

  Then what happens when a young man from Japan with a poor command of English is thrown into such a situation?  People would normally feel themselves minorities as you did.  Yet, in this city, loads of Asians just moved here.  So, you cannot even be a minority here.  This is basically a comfortable thing, yet I was taken aback at first.  Whether it’s good or not, being a minority can be an identity given by society: you cannot just have it here.  You’d be buried as an individual in the saturation of diversity in this city.  I came here seeking the power of diversity, but honestly, I feared the dynamics.  What if I became nobody.

  Fortunately, I had more than “I came from Japan”; that is to be a “nomad.” I’m flattered you call it cross-disciplinary because it sounds great, haha.  But I’ve had a lot of experiences, and I’ve dipped my toe in architecture, painting and the contemporary art field, which has pulled my beloved art of painting out of the mainstream in art.  I talk about dodgy theories,  have a particular technique and make uneasy works: this is recognised as a proper identity in this city.  Because no matter how saturated with diversity, what is fostered by going “here and there” is one and only.  This text will be read in Gallery K, but when I show my portfolio of installations done in there, people are somewhat scared and say, “What is this?” Utsumi sensei always said that “artists who create things can go anywhere on the planet”, and now I am finally looking at what he truly meant in the context of this city.

  With things and that, it didn’t take time to get over this fear of being swallowed by its diversity, as I happened to be one of those who create things.  But at the same time, those who might be in the same fear are “local” people who never questioned their identities and lived in peace.  This is why people flood in categorisation out of fear against diversity, namely “white supremacy” or “male chauvinism.” It goes without saying that it’s happening not only in America but also all over the world.  Japanese society is not an exception either.  Japan has never been exposed to racial diversity… that’s a lie.  It is a society that has closed off diversity by suppressing minority foreign nationals in Japan.  Anti-China/Korean, anti-feminism or discrimination in LGBTQ… all forms of backlash have erupted.  Moreover, people started to rush into “Japan”, as in patriotic identity, to fight back against the diversity.

  I can now reach out to Hori Fumiko-san’s life.  She kept going around the world and creating the painting in her own way, which no one else could do.  Her art was categorised as “Japanese Painting” but didn’t fall into a naive “Japanese” identity…  After a few months in San Fransisco, I realised that her mentality, namely “not residing in one place”, was actually all about her own identity.  Identity is not an easy subject.  Meiji Government invoked the Emperor as an icon in order to drag people, including Ainu and Ryukyu, into a forged identity: That is the “Great Japanese Empire.” This is when the genre “Japanese Painting” was made up as a cultural identity.  This country started marching towards the wars by mobilising the national identity such as “Japan” or “Japanese Subject.” This ended up killing Hori-san’s two brothers.  It must have been her devastating resistance against the modern nation-state to stick to her not-residing-in-one-place mentality.

  Coming back to the present time, the situation I’ve been witnessing would be, sooner or later, happening in cities worldwide.  Which is actually ongoing, I believe.  Modern times were to seek the identities for people who were about to be buried in homogenised societies after the corruptions of feudal societies.  “Nation” was being distributed to people as an identity, which led to cruel nationalism or fascism and loss of control.  What is happening now is the deepening of diversities, which melts the framework of the modern nation-state: Here, people once again have to struggle against the fear of being lost in identity.  The easiest fight is to rush back to “nation” or a modern system like patriarchy.  This thought brings the ghosts back in the twenty-first century; the Nazis, KKK and the Great Japanese Empire.  Nonetheless, there is an effective way to build your identity; being “here and there.”

  I have learned the term/notion “Trans-Culture” in the art scene in San Fransisco.  Say there is a child that has a hard time figuring out the identity: the mother is Japanese, the father is Philipino, and the child grew up in America.  There are a lot of children who struggle with their identity since there have been a lot of immigrants here in San Fransisco.  Cutting to the chase, the child’s cultural identity lies where Japanese, Philipino, and American cultures cross over each other: This mixed culture in the child’s life, namely the Trans-Culture, is the child’s identity.  An individual identity is nurtured at the cross point where being “here and there” comes together.  This is what “Trans-Culture” is, and it is a key term in the art scene in San Fransisco nowadays.  Immigrants in America were asked to assimilate into American White culture in the Melting Pot of American society until a while ago.  America was singing the praises of racial diversities, but it was actually going the other way; American nationalism.  Artists here in San Fransisco going against that pureblood-ism in culture by pushing crossbred power, which is the culture’s essence, against it.  Identities that cross over each other infinitely, and mutualistic relationships are built out of mutual respect.  Artists here are proud of their own diversities.  I believe this state of mind would help our identity crisis from the saturated condition of diversity.  I might be too optimistic, but I feel that optimism is present in this art scene here.

  Having said that, and subsequently speaking, I’d actually like to see further than “Trans-Culture” or being “here and there” as an artist…  But I’d put my pen down here; otherwise, it’s going to be endless.

  There’s actually one more thing.  It is not my contention to fantasise about San Fransisco as the best multicultural place.  However, I must highlight that this “light”, multicultural life tags along with the “darkness” of this city, a growing economic disparity.  You cannot grasp the whole image by only looking at San Francisco.  You’ll start to see it if you drive south for an hour in San Jose to capture the situation, looking at it all together as Silicon Valley.

  I write about San Francisco almost only, and I’m sorry about that.  I finally could not reach out to the most crucial parts, “About the freedom” and “Architecture and painting.” I hope you are fine with me taking those to the coming turns.

  What is it like now in Switzerland?  America is a country/society that has thrived as a diverse society, and I assume Switzerland is where various people come from different contexts.  It was a hundred years ago, but Dada also came into being in Zürich.

  Anyway, I just wrote whatever I wanted to write and didn’t answer your questions.  I’m sorry for it, but I hope you take it well.

Best,
Okubo