Kazutaka Hirota/Hwaeung Hwang

1022 Verdemar Dr Alameda, CA 94502 rivmicm@hotmail.com

Links as My Portfolio: http://rivmicm.wix.com/hirotakazutakahttps://www.facebook.com/rivmicm

Homeostasis

While studying at an art school in Japan based on the American education system, I learned the

significance of Orphism, American Abstract Expressionism, and, especially, Richard Diebenkorn's Berkeley

years. However, many instructors there had developed artistically in the 1980s and regarded painting as an out-

of-date expression. One of them asked me when I was a freshman, “You told me you don't know how to

PAINT a propeller, but why don't you PUT AN ACTUAL PROPELLER on canvas?” This motivated me to

focus on painting as my speciality because formative art is one of the primary activities of humans and many

people, even in the art field, overlook this fact. The frailty of Japanese art today is due to its never having

interpreted Western art through the viewpoint of Asian ideas. Applying Japanese Buddhist ideas to Western

painting methods, I attempt to create a new aesthetic merging the strengths of East and West.

My art strives to achieve a homeostasis of human existence. Right now, humanity is disconnected

from nature and filled with too much rationality derived from contemporary society. We are out of balance. My

artistic mission is to connect my audience with a sense of nature, from which rationality isolates him or her.

The reason why I am working for this formative expression is that formative art, or non-verbal expression,

does not have to rely on verbal or linguistic activity, which is dominated by rationality and necessarily isolates

human beings from nature. The Taoistic term “Mui Shizen,” which decisively influences Japanese Buddhism,

captures the goal of my painting. “Mui” can be translated into “without willful purpose.” In Japanese, “shizen”

is basically translated to “nature,” but in a Taoist context, the term “shizen” also explains the meaning of nature

itself. In Asian cultures, nature means not only natural materials but also the presence that becomes itself by

itself. While I am painting, I recognize the autonomy or spontaneousness of the painting as it appears. Once

the autonomy/spontaneousness of the painting emerges, the painting in process starts to become the painting

by itself. I simply add shapes and colors to the emerging form, following its autonomy/spontaneousness – art

is not artificial but living: nature. A cloud is made of vapor and temperature; wind is created by the differences

of atmospheric pressures. My painting is a natural phenomenon of shapes and colors on canvas because it is

created by its autonomy/spontaneousness through my Imagination. In this way, my formative painting strives

to provide the audience with a sense of nature in order to neutralize the excessive rationality that unbalances

people's daily lives.

My goal for the future is to continue to pursue the meaning and efficacy of formative art as the

greatest common measure between Western art and Asian culture. My painting will be like a cultural bridge

between the two hemispheres. Beyond that, it will be art work which everyone around the world can appreciate

beyond her or his cultural background. Also, my professional goal is to work as an art educator in the U.S. to

show American students how Asian values can be applied to Western art and to let Asian students know how

Western art represents the system of Western thought.