Produced by the art project producing team, WATOWA GALLERY, the exhibition “TWO IRON MAN” by Tomoyuki Shinki and Katsuhiro Terao will open on October 8th, 2022 at WATOWA GALLERY / THE BOX TOKYO.
The artistry of Tomoyuki Shinki and Katsuhiro Terao differs. Shinki draws athletes. “I don’t want to talk about it but want to make a work from the sensation when I see the athletes colliding with one another” is what he says, attentively capturing the simplified movements of the athletes. The thick-colored, comic, and lively drawings of Shinki are brimmed with vitality and energy. On the other hand, based on his experiences working in ironwork as a welder, Terao creates drawings called “plans.” Terao’s works, the iron frame plans, hold a graveness as well as a delicacy, with a minuteness that doesn’t let one focus on a certain point. The common feature in these two artists is their attitude toward creation, to fix a unique motif as the one and only pursuit, such as the athletes for Shinki and iron for Terao. Sometimes, the works of Tomoyuki Shinki and Katsuhiro Terao are not spoken of in terms of “art,” which owes to the disabilities they hold. “Art Brut” was a term defined at the start of the 20th century in Europe, referring to art outside traditional art. However in Japan today, this expression is mistaken as the “art of disabled people.” Categorized by a term distant from its original meaning, the works created by disabled people are sometimes forgotten in the perspectives of “art.” Why would a piece of work be grouped by the character of its creator and not its content? The problem doesn’t lie in the artist but in the awareness of this society in treating their works. Yet, Shinki and Terao have achieved remarkable things in “Contemporary Art” and have fascinated many art fans. This exhibition questions the reaction of this society to expressions through the works of Shinki and Terao, two acclaimed artists of contemporary art. Deformation skills and the balanced sense of colors of Shinki, or the plans crowded with geometrical figures of Terao; their uniqueness only lies in their expressions. Please enjoy the world of these two iron men who continuously burn their passion for their unchanging subject.
