Hiroyuki Nakajima's apprenticeship in calligraphy began when he was six years old. He continued to study and practice the art while he was enrolled in his architecture course at the University of Chiba near Tokyo. At thirty, instead of opening a school like most calligraphers in Japan, he chose to become a professional artist. Hiroyuki Nakajima creates contemporary abstract works out the traditional heritage of Sho calligraphy, which is also a work of concentration as well as a meditative philosophy.
There is a double movement in these installations – the exhibition of the works themselves and the performance which demonstrates this art of gesture as it happens.
Since 2000, Hiroyuki Nakajima's work has been exhibited around the world and particularly in European countries.
Calligraphy \'Sho' is an integral part of Japanese culture, an accomplished art which combines a high level of technique, concentration and philosophy, with discipline and creativity. The Japanese artist Hiroyuki Nakajima follows the tradition to the letter to produce contemporary work based on this art of gesture and lines.
His installation Lune (Moon) is made out of the Sino-Japanese character for the moon, a natural and powerfully evocative element. The artist exhibits here his large-scale calligraphy paintings done during a performance which is shown on video screens.
Everyday, Hiroyuki Nakajima, will create a new picture in public as a performance. In impressions, marks, lines and strokes, the calligrapher unconsciously outlines profound images. From the gesture of the hand to the brush, from the Chinese ink to the paper, a world comes forth like a vision, a sensation from within, transferred in a single gesture, in one instant.
A lifetime's apprenticeship guides this lively and precise movement, while the breath of the painter gives life to it. Hiroyuki Nakajima's black and white drawings have the refined elegance of an act in harmony with nature creating a bond between all people and the world and its elements.
Irène Filiberti
Distribution
Installation-performance de : Hiroyuki Nakajima
collaboration : Yuko Sakurada
vidéo : Norio Tokumitsu
Production
Production : Festival d'Avignon
avec le soutien : de la Fondation du Japon
Remerciements : au Conseil général de Vaucluse