Exhibitions

谷澤邦彦 KUNIHIKO YAZAWA

2025.12.18 (thu) - 2026.3.13 (fri)

Shapes of Water

Looking back at the works I’ve created over the years, I notice that despite differences in technique and period, quite a few share common motifs.

Water is one of them. I have painted landscapes shaped by water - rivers and seas, rain and waves - as well as water itself in its various states: droplets, ice, snow. Of course, all of these are projections of the world I want to express, filtered through the many faces of water . They are all my visions of water. Beyond these works, I’ve also realised that quite a number of pieces I’ve completed - without consciously trying to depict something 'water-like' - happen to evoke water nonetheless.

For this exhibition, I decided to curate a selection from this body of work. But why water ?

It began with a painting I completed this September, my Vision Art 　 piece , which I very much wanted to exhibit. As you can see, it depicts a waterfall suspected in space, with water cascading down the center of the composition. (For some reason, this was the image that came to me.) Seeing this work, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to select pieces around the theme of water .

As I write this, a memory comes to mind.

When my mother passed away in 2013, I wanted to scatter her ashes together with my father’s. So after 30 years, I took the funerary urn out from beneath my father’s tombstone and opened the lid - admittedly with some trepidation.

To my astonishment, the bones that should have been there were gone. All that remained was a small amount of whitish powder that had settled at the bottom of the water. I knew that more than half the human body is water, but I was surprised to discover that in the end, even bones become water.

Though not included in this exhibition, I made a series of paintings based on the Five Elements - wood, fire, earth, metal, and water - from ancient Chinese philosophy. I reimagined what each element might symbolise in the present day. For water, I arrived at communication. The way we communicate shifts and changes depending on the person, the situation, the different positions we hold - yet something essential remains constant. Just as ice, snow and steam, are all, at their core, water. That was my thought, and my wish.

Water is essential - to all living beings and the Earth itself. It nurtures life, but it can also threaten it.

Water.
Through this exhibition, I want to reflect on it once more.