Carrara, Massa, Pietrasanta.
Marble, one of the most beautiful drops squeezed out
of the womb of the planet Earth,
is concentrated and buried in these areas. Kan Yasuda,
a sculptor born in Hokkaido,
a large island at the northern tip of Japan,
now lives in Pietrasanta
and devotes himself to digging sculptures out of huge blocks of marble.

What he is doing is no different
from what Michelangelo did here five hundred years ago.
In that sense,
his work is nothing more than a small step forward
in the long history of sculpture.

To push history forward just a little bit.
What greater goal can an artist have?
Especially for a sculptor,
who is silently hammering his chisel against a stone as old as the earth.

The stone is always silently waiting.
The sculptor is always called by the stone.
But the number of sculptors who can open the deep voice of the stone is limited.
To listen to the voice of the stone,
to carve it according to the shape and contours it desires,
to carve out from within the stone what is called a “work of sculpture,”
to give a definite form to the deep affection,
dare I say love, between stone and man, and to create a new child called
a “work of art” in the world.

For a stone sculptor,
there could be no more gratifying drama of self-realization and self-liberation.
What Kan Yasuda is doing at Pietrasanta
is nothing less than the daily pursuit of this simple and
at the same time difficult truth about the sculptor.

He is probably one of the largest marble sculptors of our time.
The rough marble he uses can weigh up to 40 tons.
He chisels and chops it down to find the stone’s unique form,
which it has carefully hidden for hundreds of millions of years,
and then brings that form out into the sunlight.
In the process, the stone’s weight will be reduced by half.
It will lose a third of its weight.
A sculptural work will gradually emerge
from the process of chipping away at the outer skin.
Once something has been shaved off,
it will never come back.
The beautiful curved surfaces of the world may be hidden
in the stone blocks that have been inadvertently removed.
The work of Kan Yasuda is always carried out
in the midst of this severe selection process.
His sculptures are made up of the strict refusal to add anything,
and his sculptures are made up of the process of cutting down.
This is the reason for the bashfulness of his works.
The forms of his works are the ultimate in simplicity,
but they are forms that gradually emerge from within,
and the richness they contain is the very richness of a growing fetus.

When it comes to a rough stone as large as 40 tons,
it is extremely difficult to find the stone itself as a material,
and one has to be extremely lucky.
Often, a huge stone that could have been
a wonderful material is found to be unsuitable
for sculpture because of a small crack in the center.
In such cases, the sculptor must patiently wait
until the next good piece of wood is carved from the mountain.
For a marble sculpture as large as Kan’s,
the fact that it has finally been completed is
already the fruit of a rare piece of good fortune.
And when a marble sculpture,
breathing in its own eternity,
tells us that “another time” exists and suggests that even
in the ephemeral life on earth,
the shadow of eternity has fallen, we cannot.

The sculptures of Kan Yasuda are rare works of art today
that offer such a sense of happiness.
On Via Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan,
where his works were exhibited from spring to summer of 1999,
young men sat and laughed with the sculptures,
and lovers sat on the ground with their backs against the sculptures,
holding hands and smiling happily forever.
Children continued to play hide-and-seek through
the holes in the sculpture’s body,
and the sculpture let out a silent sigh of praise for the city of Milan each time.
The exhibition of Kan’s works was so well received by the citizens of Milan
that the city authorities extended the exhibition period
to twice the usual two months,
filling the promenade of Via Vittorio Emanuelegni
with the elegance, grace, and imposing presence of Kan’s works.

The sculptures of Kan Yasuda unwittingly restore the liberated
and relaxed ego of the people who come into contact with them.
People forget that the sculpture is the work of a single sculptor,
Kan Yasuda, and simply touch the beautiful curves
and volumes of marble with their eyes,
imagine them with their bodies,
and memorize them with their hands.

Rather than asserting himself,
Kan would rather choose to immerse his entire body
in the stone of sculpture.
It is only natural.
Compared to the life of a stone,
the life of each of us is no more than a drop in the ocean.
But it is precisely because we have such a short life
that we are able to listen attentively to the whispering of the stone.
It is because we have such a short life
that we are able to listen carefully to the whisper of the stone that says,
“Hey, carve here, carve there.

Makoto Ooka
Poet

 

ISHINKI, Sculpture Path, Milano

ISHINKI “Sculpture Path”, Milano Photo by Romano Cagnoni

 

▶︎Exhibitions / Sculpture Path