Yoshimasu Gozo: Fire Embroidery - Beyond Ishikari Sheets

For Yoshimasu Gozo, Hokkaido has been a stage for recovering from critical states as a poet over the course of his long career.

After returning to Japan from Brazil, he held an exhibition referred to as Ishikari Kako – Suwaru (lit. Sit at the Mouth of the Ishikari River) in Temporary Space, a gallery in Sapporo, and then he actually sat near the mouth of the river for four months while hitting copper sheets to release his representative work Ishikari Sheets in 1994. He also began to write a poem while sitting at the mouth of the river just after his exhibition Ishikari Kako – Suwaru Futatabi (lit. Sit at the Mouth of the Ishikari River Again) at Temporary Space in the cold winter of 2011, the year of the Great East Japan Earthquake, and released the long poem Kaibutsukun five years later.

If you imagine the poet standing at the mouth of the Ishikari River, it may remind you of problems with the modernization of Sapporo (which started from the river mouth) and the possibility of revival from a problematic state. The atmosphere of Yubari Coal Mine and Ahunrupar (meaning the “gateway to the other world” in Ainu) – Hokkaido is the boundary between life and death for the poet and the gateway to primordial imagery.

In SIAF2017, this exhibition will look back on the vision of Ishikari Sheets (the axis of his work), and see the release of a new work that pushes boundaries even further.