What do you mean by “hit home” when it comes to your work?That’s truly difficult to explain, particularly when it comes to my art... Whether something is acceptable to me or “feels like it went well” comes down to nothing but a sense, really. You see, it’s rough until I get to that feeling where things have fallen into place. Put simply, it’s a feeling like I’m not “trying hard”, I guess. At the beginning, I give it my all and push myself, maybe putting in too much detail or going at it too heavy-handed. The ordeal is making it past that point.
You say it’s difficult to explain your artwork, but when I read the descriptions that accompany your exhibitions, it feels like your work is put into words quite carefully and eloquently.Well, those writeups are actually done by the gallery folks. Sometimes I think, “Wow, they really nailed it,” but honestly, there are other times where I feel like, “Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch.” But I bet it’s a real headache for the people writing those, since I barely give them any explanation to work with. I always tell them, “Feel free to ask if you have questions,” but even when they do—like, say, “Why is this woman in the painting looking away?”—all I can say is, “No reason, really.” There’s no hidden meaning or message behind it whatsoever.
If we’re speaking of recently, how about your exhibition in Milan last fall?That show was held at an art museum, so I had a LOT of online meetings with the Italian folks there. The first thing they asked me about was the concept. To which I of course reply, “There is no concept” (laughs). “I always start painting spontaneously, and especially since switching to color, I don’t make art with any concept in mind.” That meant the pieces for that exhibition didn’t have any overarching theme either, they were simply paintings of the ideas I’d had each day, with styles that were pretty all over the place to boot. Since I said it was all kind of like a “hotchpotch”, the title for the exhibition ended up being “Gumbo”, as in “gumbo soup” since that carried the same meaning in Italian.
You also created a few sculptures for that show.So, I got the idea to make something with my own homemade clay, sticks, and cardboard like I was in elementary school. I’d had this small sculpture I’d made just for fun, with no intention of exhibiting it, but after looking at it for a bit, I felt like making something a bit larger. I didn’t buy any materials, instead working with things I had here or found lying around outside. I wanted to use clay, but buying only clay would be annoying. Then I remembered how I made clay with newspaper in elementary school, so I started by bringing a bunch of newspapers over each morning to cut up. The canvas remained blank the entire time, so the curator in Milan started to get a little worried about what I was up to
Are there any rules or guidelines about the size or number of works in your solo shows?No. That’s the fun part of art, whereas with design or illustration jobs, you have enough client demands and rules to drive a person crazy, right? But with art, it’s basically all up to you. Sure, there are restrictions on space, but otherwise the gallery doesn’t say anything, pretty much leaving the rest to me. Taken to the extreme, I could even put a single tiny piece on the white wall of a big gallery and say, “That’s my exhibition,” and that’d be fine. There are actually artists like that out there, but I don’t have that kind of confidence, so I always paint lots of stuff.
Do you feel as if the aggregate sum of artwork in your solo shows comes together as something cohesive?It may turn out that way in the end, but when I’m making the artwork I don’t have a thought like that in my head. I don’t do concepts or themes—it’s just paint one piece and that’s it, paint the next piece and that’s it, with each piece being entirely separate from the rest. Except that when looked at as a whole, at times they have a surprising sense of cohesion.
For example, “Gumbo” marks your sixth solo exhibition since going color, but when I look at each of your exhibitions in stages, I can sense change and evolution.A lot has changed, yeah, but I’m not doing it consciously. It’s all just how things turned out
Even with colors, when I look back at old art I made back in high school and my 20s, it comes as a bit of a shock to find that what feels fresh to me now turns out to have changed hardly at all from the tones I liked back then.
Francis Picabia, a painter I like and a contemporary of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, once said that he wanted to “change styles like changing shirts”, and he in fact did have drastically different styles over the years—his work changed so much that you’d think it was by a different artist. That’s just so cool. I may not have it in me to go that far, but I still hold on to that hope.
I know this is coming from a complete layman’s perspective, but it seems as if you’ve not just changed in style, but also gained some polish technically as well.Well, I did study all this formally, so I’d like to think I have a bit more technique than the average bear, if I do say so myself. All the same, at this point what I really want to be is totally without skill. I want to throw away all that technique I learned and paint more instinctually. As I recall, in his later years Picasso said something to the effect that “it’d taken him a lifetime to learn to paint like a child,” and I think maybe that’s how old you have to get before you can reach that point.
But didn’t you used to want to be more skilled?I suppose that’s the contradiction, huh. When you’re young, you want to get better, but once you improve to a point, you get bored with it. Sounds kinda weird, I guess. It’s the same with music. Like with guitar solos, they’ll say it’s better to play fast, but then it’s like no, no, that’s nothing but technique, that’s boring. There are plenty of people who have only skill, so technique isn’t what really matters. It’s sense that’s key. But even sense alone isn’t good enough, because you can’t express said sense without technique. That’s the tricky part.
Has there been any change in your attitude toward solo shows after all of your exhibition experience?I can’t say there has. The lead-up to a solo show is always awful. I don’t have any assistants, so getting the canvas ready is tough. If it was just one or two paintings it’d be easy, but with solo shows we’re talking about 10 or more paintings, so even at that stage I’m sighing like, “What a pain.” But I’ve been doing this for decades now, so I’m pretty much a master at this point.
You’ve chosen not to have any assistants?I don’t want any assistants. I don’t need any. I’ve always been a huge fan of Shinro Ohtake, and he also doesn’t have any assistants. When I spoke to him in the past, he said, “Once you take on an assistant, you’re finished as an artist. You think you’re a big shot. An artist needs to do their own work,” to which I heartily agreed
Especially when I go abroad I get asked “How many assistants do you have?”. Everybody is seriously shocked when they hear I have none. There are artists out there who have dozens of assistants, and while I’m not saying that’s bad, I don’t think that kind of organization or factory system is my cup of tea.
If we can touch back on the leadup to your solo shows, do you get nervous right before opening?No, the time where I’m most on-edge really is when I’m painting the artwork for it. Once the paintings are finished and on the walls, my duty is finished and I can’t do anything about what anyone says next. So I’m not particularly nervous when the opening rolls around.
So you’re at your most tense and on-edge when painting.It really is like a battle, so yeah, I’m tense. There are plenty of times where I realize I’ve been talking to myself, saying, “That’s not right,” or “No, wrong,” or even, “Yeah, that’s the way.” One step in the wrong direction and it’s like I have multiple voices in my head. This hard-nosed persona that’s all “You sure you’re okay with THAT?” shows up in my head, then on the other hand there’s also the easygoing side of me going “Okay, okay, that works.” But as things get down to the wire, the hard-nosed side of me will sometimes take the upper hand, which then leaves me like “Ugh, really?”
How do you determine when a piece of artwork is complete?A lot of people have a lot of different opinions about that. When you’re young, you can’t help but try too hard, overdoing it by adding just one more line here to something that should be considered finished because it “might look cooler”. But sometimes all it takes is a single line or even a dot to ruin a painting. At this point I’ve learned “when it’s time to quit”, almost like my paintings tell me when to not add anything else.
When that happens, I’ll step outside to smoke for a bit, where I’ll have another moment of self-reflection, like, “You’re sure you’re okay with this?” Then I’ll head back inside and stare at the painting again. If I feel confident about it at that point, then I’m really, truly done and I’ll hop on my bike to reset my mood with a refreshing ride. I’ll take a breather on the banks of the Tama River, just taking in how beautiful it is, and think, “I painted some good stuff today, huh. Well, let’s go home.” Let me tell you, a beer right after I get out of the bath is the best (laughs). That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me going, but of course not every day goes that way. There’ll be times where I can’t paint a thing for weeks and head home still in a gloomy mood for just a shower followed by a grumpy drink.
Is there a difference in how your artwork seems when you’re immersed in painting and when you look at it again once you’ve finished?Yeah, every time. It’s like I was just saying: when a painting feels about right, I’ll step outside for a break, then go back for another look at it once I’ve purged the afterimages of what I’m currently working on and forgotten all the details. Sometimes a break isn’t enough to forget everything, so when I need to go home and sleep once I’ve finished painting and then come back to the studio the next morning for another look—that’s super fun. I’ll open the door not quite sure what to expect, then be like, “Wow, this looks fine,” when I see the painting again. But there are also times when I’m like, “Huh, this is no good...” which is rough because I’ll have to start the morning erasing or tossing stuff out.
Do you have strict standards when it comes to a painting being acceptable?I think I’ve gotten more strict than I used to be. Like when I look at something I did 10 years ago, I’ll think, “I couldn’t paint that now.” A lot of times I’ll think, “I really thought this was okay?” and feel all embarrassed. That’s not to say I hate all my old work, though—there’s plenty of times where I like what I see.
Even now, when I only present work I’ve found acceptable after multiple reviews, there’ll be moments where I see a piece hung on the blank white wall of a gallery and just say, “Huh?” and start to see points that made me reconsider why I ever thought the piece was fine. Sometimes I think maybe I should just take the plunge and paint the walls of my studio all white, but I also get the feeling that wouldn’t solve the issue...
What’s one of your past pieces that you’ve found the most acceptable?One that I really like is the monochrome painting KAWS bought that I mentioned before, the one that led to me connecting with Mary Boone. It was a big piece, the only one I displayed at the ATM Gallery group show, and then showed at “The Great Circus”. It’s very abstract for one of my paintings, one where I stopped just short of going full abstract at a point where if I added any more, it would’ve lost all sense. That painting represents me at my peak in that era, one that I haven’t surpassed yet. I hear a lot of musicians wonder why they “can’t seem to make anything better than that one song,” so it feels like every creator regardless of the genre has that one piece of work they did that they just can’t beat.