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ARTIST Statement
Tetsuya Noguchi
Nowadays, there are diverse creative mediums with motifs of armor and samurai, not only in the art world but also in TV, films, games and comics, in other words: too numerous to enumerate.
What one normally sees when samurai and art are integrated, is an approach conjoined to “common factors between modern people and samurai”, putting aside the creation of a heroic character which possesses ordinary people’s desires.
The themes are as such; “expressing the universality of a human being through samurai” or “samurai’s distress in social life”.
Undoubtedly, it is easy to overlap the sorrow of the modern people with the comical expression of Samurai that Noguchi creates.
However, the cynical nuance perceived from the frivolous Samurai, who at times flies in the air, and at other times takes a walk with the cats, goes further beyond the standpoint of the banal “common factors between modern people and samurai”. Instead one sees a levelheaded perspective overviewing these emotional explanations.
This point of view is, without saying, Noguchi’s value itself. Behind it lays his ability to understand in parallel the subculture and antique to fine art, in which we find a unique generational situation. As Noguchi’s generation was brought up during a turning point in the culture, where art popularized and subculture attained its’ civil rights, there are no unconditional beliefs towards art, or one-sided prejudice concerning subculture and antiques.
Regardless of the genres, Noguchi takes a frank approach to the things he prefers. Broken down antiques, SF mechanics, and modern paintings can coexist inside his individual rules. Whilst Noguchi’s works receive recognition as art, it is no coincidence that he combines the essence of figurines and antiques, given that his generation was fond of playing with plastic models and historical simulation games.
When referring to why we find the specific, generation-oriented value in the context behind Noguchi’s works, the most important part is that he sought the meaning which surfaced from a physical phenomenon. Not from the insecure artistic characters, such as “universality” or “modernity” in the composition of the samurai and armor motifs. Thus, he perceived “added values” such as damages, stains, detachment, legacy and presentation technique as an important factor, concentrating on elements unrelated to the creation of a form.
For example, looking from one angle, the world of antiques that deals with armor is a world of added values. It is a field which seeks importance in antiquity and legacy that originate unrelated to its’ form or the creator. Even with identical structures, the statue of Buddha, temples, shrines and armor, for instance, can only exist if accompanied by antiquity and legacy. The restored figure which became flat and vivid in color will have no commercial value as an antique. Commercial value tends to reflect high public popularity, and the fact that many people pay large amounts of fortune to added value is a good example. “Fabricated added value” seen in imitations has no end leading to trouble, which also proves the importance of the added value in an ironic way.
Not even mentioning the activity of imitations, added value is normally considered something that unites to the form over time, and is deeply acknowledged as not artificial. However, if we look at this maliciously there are still some people who are moved emotionally, not knowing that it is an imitation, and from this we understand the interesting truth of how created added value can move people’s feelings.
It is possible to create an added value that evokes people’s emotions_.
This seemingly original theory is actually, according to Noguchi, something repeatedly put into practice for a long time, in the subculture he was deeply involved in during his youth.
In the world of modeling, scratches and dusty finishes are called weathering, and this has been spontaneously combined in the coating process. The expression of local color and a battered look are a synonym in this world. Specific information like usage status, construction material and configuration references gives inevitability in the working process, interlocking everything and producing realistic combat vehicles and robots. Furthermore, comic books and animation broaden the world-view of modeling, supplying the viewer’s images. This has fundamentally the same meaning as the previously noted creation of added value.
The comparison of antiques and plastic models might be far-fetched, but a strange common factor arises by pairing it together, in which added values strengthen the significance of a form.
While relishing subculture and antiques, Noguchi got to this theory ever so naturally. The string of emotions we see in antiques is derived from added values, and added values are reproducible by evident handicraft techniques. If evident works can produce emotions, by indicating the process as contemporary, he imports it back into modern art.
Noguchi demolishes the added values we have not yet interpreted more than “the romance of history”. His works, which are directly transformed from the act of demolishing the structure, warn us cynically that the structure of emotions we fondly give a profound meaning to is actually composed of processes.
Some people determine that added value is not related to the essential qualities, criticizing the bystander attitude that relies on caption and legacy. Others put all their trust in added value, and by dilating it inside their own images, they abstain from looking at the object’s form. The samurai that Noguchi creates with a mysterious vision of the world appears and disappears between fiction and reality. It approaches both types of people to reconsider once more the mystical allure of added values.
Noguchi says; “When I was young, I was very much taken aback by the fact that there was not one crab inside my favorite crab stick*. Nevertheless, my yearning for the deep water crab about which I had fantasized every time I ate the crab stick was real, without pretense.”
Noguchi, discovering the emotions composed by crab sticks, did not get angry or annoyed but welcomed this reality with surprise and emotion. After many twists and turns for 20 years, his stance came back to the starting point, trying to reconstruct the emotions of those times by changing the crab stick into artwork.
Is the crab stick, cooked with utmost precision comparable to the real crab?
In the world of modern art where saturation is closing in, Noguchi, who is the half blood of subculture and antiques, questions the actual feeling of ordinary life with a unique style. It is true that this unique style, because it does not posture like an existing art, is similar to a figurine or an antique. However, if the definition of contemporary art is about showing new possibilities against existing values, Noguchi’s works, from this point alone, can be said without any doubt to be a contemporary one.
*crab stick: A type of processed seafood made of finely pulverized white fish flesh that has been shaped and cured to resemble snow crab legs.