Three years ago, while looking at a museum catalogue, I found a picture of a mysterious object. It did not look like the creation of any artist. I recall it showed the carving of a wooden bear, typical of souvenirs from Hokkaido, but with leaves sprouting out. This was my first encounter with the work of Bunpei Kado. I found his style so original that I at once decided to organize an exhibition.

It is crucial for an artist to have their own style, distinguishable from anyone else’s. But so many modes of expression have been exhausted by artists around the world over the long history of art, that, although each age is different, it is still difficult for an artist to discover their own distinctive voice. Some people claim art must expand its territory to survive and keep evolving. 

So what are the peculiarities of Bunpei Kado’s work? He moves in two directions. First is seen in his Germination series, where leaves bud from buttons, drawers and chairs. The other is his work on urban themes, best seen in his Human Nest. The Germination series developed into the Bulb series, where the artist fabricated work with leaves budding from water in a metal tank he had found and recuperated, with leaves breaking out of the tank. Kado is proficient in metalwork and likes to make use of found objects. He incorporates them to form something that looks as if it has been there for a very long time, but in fact has not. For example, he adapted the tank in the Bulb series by cutting and connecting pieces of metal, and the rustic surface with its worn-out paint was of his making. As a result of these processes, a stereotypical ‘tank’ familiar to our notion of such was created. It is not a tank proclaiming the unique manifestation of an artist’s originality. In Kado’s work the viewer does not feel they are before a created object. Things look natural and appear to have been found just as they now are. It is in this sense that I consider Kado to be one of the most representational artists in the field of three-dimensional work today.

A characteristic of Kado’s work is to begin production by creating stereotyped objects using materials at hand. These are banal and familiar things, like knives, chairs or drawers. If they were not stereotypical, they could not function as ‘signs’, but would signify something more. Another peculiarity is his generation of new meaning by combining objects into forms like jigsaws, and creating a divergence between the original function and the new meaning. The Human Nest series, combining houses and cranes, tactfully expresses the instability of our contemporary urban residential environment. It is fascinating how Kado’s work shows something unreal by using a combination of familiar objects. The oscillation of meaning generated by this method has broadened in scope over the past few years. 

Kado had already shown us interesting works of this kind when he participated in the 2013 Art Setouchi. There he revealed further developments. Outside museums and galleries, with their consciously neutral spaces, he incorporated meanings derived from the place or region where his work was put. We look forward to his future pieces showing more of this combination of object and space, as well as his combinations of objects. This solo show at the Art Front Gallery will use three gallery spaces, each being a differently organized pre-existing room, to show his installations. Existing works such as the carved wooden bear from Hokkaido will appear, but will now be shown in the further development of a spatial expression. 
- Toshiro Kondo, Art Front Gallery

*image (left)
© Bunpei Kado
courtesy of the artist and Art Front Gallery