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Susumu Koshimizu

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Susumu Koshimizu (Born 1944) is active/lives in Japan.  Susumu Koshimizu is known for Sculpture and installation art of basic materials, anti-modernism.

Over the course of his career, Susumu Koshimizu has worked mainly with natural materials like wood, iron, stone and paper, presenting them in unexpected circumstances and combining them with industrial materials. In the way he combines materials, he plays with contrast, exploring and exalting their characteristic elements.

He is one of the principal artists associated with the Mono-ha movement, and amongst them, unique as well for having been the only artist to have trained in sculpture, studying at the Tama Art University in Tokyo in the late 1960s. Amongst the artists of the Mono-ha movement, he single-handedly reevaluated the art of sculpture in Japan in the 1970s within an artistic environment that was increasingly enamoured with the possibilities of conceptual art.

In 1975, Koshimizu went into an intense period of study at a pottery production site in Shigaraki, a mountain village near Kyoto and it was there he made various forms of earthenware basins. He fille   ...  [Displaying 1000 of 4442 characters.]  Artist bio

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Similar artists

.  There are 24 similar (related) artists for Susumu Koshimizu available:    Shinohara Ushio,  Kishio Suga,  Nobuo Sekine,  Masaaki Yamada,  Jiro Takamatsu,  Kazumi Nakamura,  Takesada Matsutani,  Tadashi Sugimata,  Waichi Tsutaka,  Jiro Yoshihara,  Keizo Koyama,  Yuichi Inoue,  Takeo Yamaguchi,  Atsushi Uemura,  Yumeji Takehisa,  Kiyonaga Ito,  Yasushi Sugiyama,  Kazuo Shiraga,  Ryohei Koiso,  Kazuki Yasuo,  Kei Hiraga,  Tamako Kataoka,  Katsumi Ukita,  Ryushi Kawabata



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Facts about Susumu Koshimizu

   Susumu Koshimizu  Born:  1944
Known for:  Sculpture and installation art of basic materials, anti-modernism

Biography from Bonhams Hong Kong

Over the course of his career, Susumu Koshimizu has worked mainly with natural materials like wood, iron, stone and paper, presenting them in unexpected circumstances and combining them with industrial materials. In the way he combines materials, he plays with contrast, exploring and exalting their characteristic elements.

He is one of the principal artists associated with the Mono-ha movement, and amongst them, unique as well for having been the only artist to have trained in sculpture, studying at the Tama Art University in Tokyo in the late 1960s. Amongst the artists of the Mono-ha movement, he single-handedly reevaluated the art of sculpture in Japan in the 1970s within an artistic environment that was increasingly enamoured with the possibilities of conceptual art.

In 1975, Koshimizu went into an intense period of study at a pottery production site in Shigaraki, a mountain village near Kyoto and it was there he made various forms of earthenware basins. He filled up these vessels with water, and these became the first works to be known under the Water-Float-Vessel series. Koshimizu created these sculptures not to underline the functionality of these basins, but to highlight the material properties of the earthenware, bamboo and stone as objects that can have a meaningful existence alongside each other.

His work, Water-Float-Vessel – Ishitsuri (Fishing of Stone), is arguably the most articulate piece from the series, with twin soaring bamboo arcs poised above a piece of wood inserted into an earthenware vessel lending the work a commanding sense of scale and completeness. It has an overall form that borrows from the shape of boats, which Koshimizu was working a lot on in the 1980s and 1990s, as he thought of the space of a boat as a space he can physically enter. Within the vessel, there are submerged stones, and these stones are tied to wire then hang from the ends of the arcs, weighed into water, signifying a potent cycle that begins and ends within itself.

As the larger part of his oeuvre springs forth from a concern to notice and accentuate the beauty of what is historical – e.g. traditional Japanese pottery - and every-day, commonplace material like stone, wood and water, his works thoroughly embody the essence of Mono-ha, which is often most simply understood as the exhibiting of matter as art, as unadorned and with as little intervention as possible.

Although that is true for Koshimizu, he additionally sees the Mono-ha artist's function to also emphasize the material beauty of the objects around him. He is therefore not adverse to manipulating matter to emphasise its beauty.

In an interview conducted with Tate Modern's Dr Lena Fritsch in 2016, Koshimizu expounded in a simple way on his artistic philosophy: When I create a piece of art, whatever material I use my idea is to show that material at its most beautiful. So if I'm using paper, I try to find a way to make that paper look as vital and paper-like as possible; a way, moreover, for it to become more than just paper – to have power beyond mere paper. To do that, I act on each material as appropriate; I interact with it as a human being. Like a supposedly worthless piece of straw that's fallen in the road. A rice stalk, or a pebble, or a twig. How to turn things that are considered mostly worthless into something beautiful. That's want I want to try and do.


Biography from Est-Ouest Auctions Co., Ltd.

Susumu Koshimizu was born in 1944. “Mono-ha” is a group that emerged from the late of the 1960's to the 1970's and Koshimizu was one of the main members. He focused on the inherent properties of the target, and produced works focused on the relationship between materials.

He has been active in exhibitions in Japan and overseas, including biennial exhibitions in Venezia and Sao Paulo. Koshimizu has a professional and abundant knowledge on the material of the wood, and used many different woods such as pine, cedar, cherry, birch, cypress, and others.

In order to create a non-daily space by using daily materials, Koshimizu not only uses wood, but he also makes use of materials like iron, Japanese paper, porcelain, etc. Carving normal woods, and then adding colours on the carved woods; or, covering the porcelain by colours. By doing such things, daily utensils and woods could break through the frame of “material”, and shine out their own brilliancy.


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