Photo: Ufer! Art Documentary

Fukumoto Shigeki studied Western painting as a student and worked for 23 years until 1989 as a dyer in the kimono industry, before creating his first dyed tableaux in 1976. Fascinated by the movement of the dye, which spreads itself rather than adhering to a surface, and by the colors produced by the reflection of light from the three-dimensionally intersecting fibers, he then began to pursue the kind of artistic expression that can only be achieved through dyeing. Basing his technique on Japan’s unique traditional dyeing techniques such as rzome (wax dyeing, a pattern dyeing technique in which melted wax is applied to the fabric to resist the dye) and hikizome (a technique in which the dye is applied with a brush), Fukumoto Shigeki has evolved a unique method that he terms ‘naruhodo-zomé’, that attempts spontaneously to capture the movement of dye. He explains the term ‘naruhodo’ as referring to ‘existing with nature, matching nature’s breath, and responding to nature’s call’.

For more than 30 years, Fukumoto Shigeki has also been reconstituting the cloth produced by his ‘naruhodo-zomé’ by a process of backing it with Japanese washi paper, cutting it into small pieces and pasting the small pieces seamlesssly together to create what he calls ‘nuno-zogan’ (cloth inlay). This fabric, pasted together in an improvisational and undirected
process, changes not only in color but also in the direction of the grain of the cloth, and in the way its shine comes and goes depending on the angle of the light. Through focusing on an expressivity that can only be achieved with fabric, the artist seems to be seeking to convey the true meaning of dyeing by denying the cloth’s function as garment.

The titles of the new works, “Sutchan Chagara” and “Chan Chagara”, derive from a story about dancing with monsters* which is related to an old tale about a man who could remove lumps, collected by YANAGITA Kunio in the Tsugaru region of northern Japan. A young man who sets out to kill the monsters is so moved by their dance and the chorus that they sing that he spontaneously joins them and dances with them in a state of selflessness. This young man shares common ground not only with Fukumoto Shigeki’s approach to creation, but also with the way he has encountered the Other in the form of Oceania’s figurative art.

* YANAGITA Kunio, ‘Gesaku-sha no dentō‘ [The tradition of the caricaturist], in Laughing Hongan (The Complete Works of Yanagita Kunio vol. 9, Chikuma Bunko, 1990), p. 260.