He is active as an artist and calligrapher. He completed a master's degree at Kyoto University of the Arts and obtained the highest rank of 8th dan from the Japan Calligraphy Education Foundation. Currently, while living in Kyoto, he creates works with a wide range of expressions, including installations and videos, based on the concept of the physicality of handwritten characters.
His previous activities include "Imako Aoka Calligraphy Exhibition: Yasutaka Tsutsui's 'Lipstick for Afterimages'" at MGG (Mitsumura Graphic Gallery), "Diary of a Man Also Smoothing" at Seikosha, and "Digital Books" at Ritsumeikan University Kaichiro Hirai Memorial Library. I was also in charge of the stage design for the three-person performance "Wochi" (Juro Miyoshi) and "Escape" (Takanyuki Ken). He has been published in the magazine "SPUR" (Shueisha) and is active in a wide range of activities.
InterviewFeatured Artist
I went to a calligraphy class in my neighborhood since I was little, and it was because I wanted to think about calligraphy in the context of art. The timing of moving to Kyoto coincided with the time when I started to feel this way, so I decided to enter graduate school at Kyoto University of Arts. In graduate school, I studied calligraphy from both production and thesis, and delved deeply into the expression calligraphy from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Through this experience, I began to create while valuing concepts more.
It is a book of the full text of Yasutaka Tsutsui's "Lipstick in the afterimage", "Imako Aoka Calligraphy Exhibition Yasutaka Tsutsui 'Lipstick in the afterimage'". The project was decided just before the corona disaster, and it took five years to create it at a time when I couldn't go out. The act of writing a series of letters on about 200 sheets of paper the size of the whole paper was like the work of incorporating Mr. Tsutsui's writing style into myself, and it was also like copying sutras, but at the same time, it was a strange feeling to be able to create a work as my own characters. It was a happy event that the author, Yasutaka Tsutsui, came to see it during the exhibition.
A few years later, I made a video work that burned all the works I wrote in full. The act of burning the work you have created may seem destructive at first glance. However, when the work was burned out, I felt that the words and letters would continue to exist just by changing their shape, as if the words and letters would melt into the air.
The concept is the physicality of the handwritten character. By putting the nuances attached to the letters that have been cut off by type into the brush, or by melting or burning the brush to erase it, I create works with the hope that the signs of letters and words can be captured in the work.
He also created works in which kana characters were cut into pieces of paper and works in which characters were deliberately garbled. All of them change the way the works look against the backdrop of the discomfort felt in modern society. I create it with the hope that the everyday words we use on a daily basis can be seen misaligned through the work, and that invisible words can be visualized and felt.
This is the video work "Yochin" presented in the graduate school completion production. Characters that fall out of nowhere, and they continue to fall endlessly, using sentences and words quoted from Yunori Sawanishi's novel "Letters of Letters", which depicts a world that threatens everyday life, and expresses how words fall, stagnate, and finally die.
I felt that this work was consistent with the meaning of my calligraphy so far, the concept of the work, and the work itself. It was the moment when the theme I had been pursuing for a long time, such as learning calligraphy, reconsidering it in the context of art, and questioning the state of language in modern society, became a form.
I was also very happy that this work and thesis were selected for the Graduate School Award.
I would like to continue to think about the existence and existence of words through calligraphy. I want to create a work that carefully looks at the "words" that are a mixture of thoughts and words, such as words that I wish I had to say in my daily life, words that have tormented me for many years, words that I tried to say but stopped saying.
Based on that thought, there are two things I would like to do someday in the long run. The first is to make an entire book of original languages and translations of foreign literature. Now I take the time to choose which literature I like. The second is an exhibition in which elderly people who used to use brushes a lot when they were children were asked to write their favorite names with a brush, and when about 100 people gather, their works will be displayed all at once. I want to make the latter my life's work.
I don't know what kind of exhibition both will be, but I would like to find a vivid calligraphy while looking at myself at that time and facing society.
His sincere attitude towards words and letters continues to expand the possibilities of calligraphy. His work, which explores the physicality of handwriting and the presence of letters, has the power to shake the viewer's senses and thoughts, and to make them perceive everyday words anew. Expectations are high for the unique world that Aoka Imako will draw and new challenges in the future.