YASUAKI KORUDA | Resurface | AL’S OFFICE
March 17 - April 19, 2024
My primary interest lies in the relationship between threads and words. As the origin of text (as sentence) was Latin, texere (weaving), textile was a language system for communicating and recording events before the development of words and sentences. The process of creating a textile is based on the conversion of the binary process, 0 and 1. The dialogue made with natural thread becomes binary within the weaving. The process starts with the primordial split, at the same time, the practice of The Union, weaving, brings opposites together.
My creation is the result of the selection and weaving together of several hundred naturally dyed silk threads and weaving them together. For one piece of my textile is based on thousands to tens of thousands of different decision processes. There are no predefined designs or set destinations but everything is the result of my decision. The textile is a constellation of the choices I made. My ’text‘ is written with threads. It may seem that I am the subject and the sole authority of my creation, however, it is not only me who chooses the threads. The Threads themselves are the choice I make. I am the subject of the thread, but the thread is also a subject that operates within me. Like a human evolves due to the choice of words he or she makes, the choices that we make shape today’s me and you. Like ‘Me’ is a record of the choices I made, what appears in this textile made of thousands of threads is what I am. Same time, a thread contains unique essence, memories and the trace from the silkworms, plants and trees, the soil, water and air that have nurtured all of them. In other words, we (myself, you, thread, silkworm, plants and trees, soil, water, air, time and memories within them) are I, and thread, are the foundation and the matter that weaves the textile, and the textile contains all these essences. It is the integration and coexistence of the matter.
Describing myself as I [A] and thread as [B] is a very anthropocentric perspective in the world dominated by words. In the textile, the threads (us) are 0, and at the same time we are 1. There is always a personal preference in the “right” or “wrong” side of the fabric, but there is no absolute “correct” or “incorrect” perspective in the textile.
The weaving proposes the perspectives that are not bound by the dichotomy such as “self/other”, “subject/object”, “natural/artificial”, but in fact “us = world”. It is a fundamental nexus for us to exist in the world (= being) and at the same time us, becoming the world.
Yasuaki Kuroda / 黒田 恭章 (b.1986, Japan) is a textile artist based in Tokyo, Japan. He holds a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Industrial, Interior and Craft Design from Musashino Art University in Japan. His complex woven colour panels are made of hundreds of carefully interlaced naturally dyed silk strands. The artist's primary interest resides in the place where threads are connected with words. The word "text" derives from the Latin term "texture" ("to weave") and textiles appeared, well before texts, as a linguistic system for communication and information recording. Kuroda's creations are abstract records of the thousands of colour and composition choices made at a particular moment in time. Yasuaki Kuroda's work was awarded the Grand Prix of the Tokyo Wonder Wall 2016, a competition organized by the Tokyo Government. His artworks have been exhibited across Japan, the United States, Germany and Canada and can be found in contemporary art collections worldwide.