ART OF KYOTO

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Gold Leaf Kyoto, Hiroto Rakusho

NEW YORK —For this Asia Week in New York, Onishi Gallery is pleased to import Gold Lead Kyoto, Hiroto Rakusho another impor­tant exhi­bi­tion spon­sored by The Kyoto Inter­na­tional Cul­tural Foun­da­tion and other cul­tural and gov­ern­ment groups in the area, which high­lights both the his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary uses of gold and sil­ver metal leaf in Japan­ese art, in a unique cul­tural preser­va­tion pro­gram that uses high tech, high def­i­n­i­tion dig­i­tal print­ing tech­niques to repro­duce cen­turies old National Trea­sures and other major art works, stored and rarely on view in the tem­ples and shrines of the for­mer capi­tol city of Japan and per­mits them now to be seen by a wider inter­na­tional audi­ence. Hiroto Rakusho, a Mas­ter of Tra­di­tional Hand­i­crafts, known for his skill in metal leaf design and the cre­ative pro­duc­tion of pat­terned gold and sil­ver leaf as an art form, has been a part of this project since its incep­tion, apply­ing the gold leaf that ani­mates and gives soul to the dig­i­tal images gen­er­ated from dete­ri­o­rat­ing byobu (fold­ing screens).

Hiroto’s metic­u­lous appli­ca­tion of gold leaf, on one such dig­i­tal repro­duc­tion on tra­di­tional hand­made washi paper at “Releas­ing the Spirit of Kyoto” exhi­bi­tion at Art­expo, at the Jacob K. Jav­its Con­ven­tion Cen­ter here in 2006, demon­strated how a tra­di­tion­ally trained arti­san of today, could meld with the cre­ative spirit of out­stand­ing artists from cen­turies ago to repro­duce their work in a thor­oughly uncon­ven­tional way.  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/arts/04shri.html

The Kyoto Inter­na­tional Cul­ture Foun­da­tion, a pri­vate, non-profit body tied to both the cen­tral and Kyoto munic­i­pal gov­ern­ments, is putting mil­lions of yen into dig­i­tal repro­duc­tions of Kyoto art from the 13th to 17th cen­turies, hop­ing to pre­serve works at 3,500 tem­ples and shrines in their cur­rent state. Because tra­di­tional Japan­ese art was done on wood or washi paper, the effects of envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors such as cli­mate, light and pol­lu­tion, have made many very frag­ile and vul­ner­a­ble. The Mas­ter­piece Archives Series Kyo-hanga recon­structs works and styles of great mas­ters in Kyoto with high def­i­n­i­tion tech­niques and gold leaf pro­cess­ing tech­niques devel­oped by Hiroto. Kyo-hanga is an inno­v­a­tive new form of arti­san­ship that revives mas­ter­works by retrac­ing the foot­steps of tra­di­tion. Gold Leaf Kyoto uses the prod­ucts of local hand­i­craft prac­ti­tion­ers in Kyoto for the sup­plies it uses every day and returns its busi­ness prof­its back to col­lec­tives and local hand­i­craft indus­tries. This helps to insure that the tra­di­tional beauty and tech­niques of Kyoto arti­sans will con­tinue to be passed down to future generations.

“Hav­ing been born in Nishi­jin (The dis­trict famed for bro­cade tex­tile pro­duc­tion in Kyoto.), I was born into a world of gold and sil­ver, Japan­ese washi paper and India ink,” Hiroto said, “a world where pol­ished crafts and beauty were taken to the absolute limit. I tried every so often to leave it all behind (His father, Jisaku Nishiyama, was a win­ner of the Kyoto City Award for Out­stand­ing Tech­ni­cal Con­tri­bu­tion to Tra­di­tional Hand­i­crafts.), but every time the “Nishi­jin” in me grew and expanded,” he explained. Given my loca­tion in Nishi­jin, where the for­mal beauty of Ogata Korin has for so long held sway, it was a fate­ful moment for me when I repro­duced “Wind and Thun­der Gods” (Fujin Rai­jin) by Tawaraya Sotatsu, the founder of the Rimpa style.

The repro­duc­tion of those pow­er­ful Gods on a pair of two panel fold­ing screens will be in the exhi­bi­tion, along with more con­tem­po­rary works from Hiroto’s The Orig­i­nal Art­works Series. These show the range and col­ors of sil­ver the sil­very moon is one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing things in the uni­verse and expresses the dynamic flow the chang­ing uni­verse. The change to sil­ver leaf from heat, which brings out the col­ors, or from over time, shows up in exam­ples worked in tapes­try, on wood and washi paper.

The tech­ni­cal side of the art works was begun by Hewlett Packard Cor­po­ra­tion, which used a 60 wide model HP Design­jet 5500ps UV printer to trans­fer the ancient images to washi paper. In 2007, Canon Inc. began a three year Cul­tural Her­itage Inher­i­tance Project, also called The TSUZURI Project, which uses Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III dig­i­tal single-lens reflex cam­eras for del­i­cate nuances of color that are so true that they are indis­tin­guish­able from the orig­i­nal. Later on this Spring, vis­i­tors to the Itochu Inter­na­tional, Inc. New York office, will be able to see a six panel screen of Flow­er­ing Plants of Autumn 2008, painted by Tawaraya Sosetsu, Edo period, 17th cen­tury, owned by the Tokyo National Museum in the lobby. Hiroto Rakusho will demon­strate his tech­nique at the Onishi Gallery on March 12th and 13rh. For artis­tic beauty and inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­ogy that links mas­ter­pieces of the past with today, Gold Leaf Kyoto, Hiroto Rakusho will give new mean­ing to a dig­i­tal copy.