is a subtractive art, resulting from the
space that is born through the removal
of the material." Kishino's art is an
art of openness to the outer world,
a tacit acknowledgment that while a
sculpture may be a bearer or marker
of divinity, it is the contemplative
process of its making, of honing
away all that is unnecessary, that is
important rather than the resulting
icon. And that icon, once it is made,
exists in the world free of maker and
owner.
Kishino, born in Kyoto in 1972, is the
son of two artists, his mother a potter,
his father an ink wash painter. His
education as an artist was strongly
inflected with Japanese history
and creative culture, and yet, after
studying with a Western-style painter
as youth, he also claims as a seminal
influence the Swiss twentieth century
sculptor Alberto Giacometti, who
carved, attenuated and elongated
his figures to impossible thinness.
Kishino perceives in Giacometti a
far Eastern awareness, a discipline
bent on "depict[ing] the visible as it
appears," evoking an essence rather
than an outline or form per se.
HYLAND
