Yashiro Toshihiro

Toshihiro spins. He spins on tables, on tatame, in museums standing or lying on plinths, in the park and in schools (by invitation). Using costumes like a painter’s palette. He spins in wigs and luminous jumpsuits in orange and green or in a ninja — like costume of plain black. He used to spin objects. The process of spinning captures a movement — the space where an object emerges from being a  distinct entity to the same as other objects in motion.

Exhibited in Europe and South East Asia and New York his most recent photography exhibition “kaitenkai” is a document of performances throughout locations in Japan. The neohistory of performance art ranging from the mystical Joseph Beuys to the  diembodied such as Stelarc has often created a space for dialogue about questions of cultural and personal boundaries and identity.

Much like the logic within quantum physics Toshihiro acknowleges the presence of the person within the space.

Toshiro addresses these questions in a playful but single minded way reducing a seemingly circus like atmosphere into quiet, focused images which hold an uncanny sense of silence and balance. In these images he steps into the photograph reducing any false hierarchy and illusion of distance. Much like the logic within quantum physics Toshihiro acknowleges the presence of the person within the space. His presence alters the space. This is particularly interesting within a museum setting as here the objects displayed are done so in a way that decontextualises them from the every day. Toshihiros intervention questions the nature of the object. In spinning he creates a relationship to the space, through the act of spinning he says he “becomes the space”.

Within Japanese philosophy and REligions (Shinto religions) the idea of becoming an object or space is not new. Modern thinker and ecologist Frijof Capra in his book The Tao of Physics writes “In ordinary life, we are not aware of the unity of all things, but divide the world into separate objects and events. This division is useful and necessary to cope with our everyday environment, but it is not a fundamental feature of reality. It is an abstraction devised by our discriminating and categorising intellect. To believe that our abstract concepts of separate ‘things’ and ‘events’ are realities of nature is an illusion.” (Capra, The Tao of Physics, 1975)

Within the field of art the idea of becoming an object reverses the usual logic and perspective of the viewer. Through groups participation Toshihiro is inviting viewers to experience as well as observe the work — the work becomes the process and the subsequent images a museum of movement.