Tokyo Gallery + BTAP will host Body and Organs, an exhibition by Sotobayashi Michiko.

The relationship between Sotobayashi Michiko and Tokyo Gallery + BTAP began when the gallery hosted the artist’s Ink Rubbing from Stone Inscription exhibition in 1977. This was the beginning of a journey in which the artist and the gallery have explored calligraphic expression. Body and Organs features a selection of calligraphic works that aim to go beyond the mere meaning of the characters they contain to use calligraphy as a form of artistic expression.

The title Body and Organs is a reference to calligraphic forms (“bodies”) and the transmuting ink that occupies them (“organs”). This exhibition aims to revisit the origin of hanzi [Chinese characters] while at the same time positing calligraphy as a new form of expression in modern art. We live in an age in which advances in information media have brought about the globalization of, and even created something of a “global standard” in, art, meaning that if artists do not consider the locality in which their works were created, diversity of artistic expression can be lost. This is therefore a time to ask ourselves what “Eastern art” is all about.

Sotobayashi Michiko began learning calligraphy at the age of eight, and in 1964 began studying under Uno Sesson, who instructed her in avant-garde calligraphic styles. Sotobayashi’s works were honoured in the 1965 Mainichi calligraphy exhibition, and most of her work since this time has been done within the Keiseikai association that was formed by Ueda Sokyu and later taken over by Uno. In the 1990s, Sotobayashi also began exploring new styles of calligraphy as art, which saw her revisiting the works of her forebears in the field of avant-garde calligraphy, namely Uno Sesson, Hidai Nankoku, and Ueda Sokyu, while at the same time looking beyond the calligraphic sphere to expression in modern art.

In calligraphy, one is guided by one’s hand when understanding the structure of characters and forming a point of view. In “global” art, by contrast, one begins with an objective viewpoint, on the basis of which one formulates the structure of the artwork before beginning the creative process. It is this approach, in which the “eye guides the hand”, that Sotobayashi’s latest experiment is all about.

*image (left)
© Michiko Sotobayashi 
courtesy of the artist and Tokyo Gallery + BTAP