The Gallery of Contemporary Textile Artists
Kiyonori Shimada
Japan
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Artist's Statement
The limestone cave, and unconscious memories of the womb…Once you retrace both their histories, you are guided back to a primordial age that we once knew intimately.
When I was a university student majoring in textiles I had the opportunity to visit a limestone cave. I was quite overwhelmed by the seductive undulations of stalactites and stalagmites, formed over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.
After much experimentation, I had the idea of not merely forming a replica of nature by copying these shapes, but of evolving and creating new shapes, through the accumulation and accretion of tens of thousands of tiny pieces of plain cloth, stitched together. This is a technique which I have stayed with for over ten years, and which I continue to develop. I have considered adding other materials to cloth in search of additional expressive power; but I firmly believe that cloth itself, by its very nature affects our emotions directly, and this is something I am exploring further. The surface texture I have arrived at is very important to me, both as a texture and as a representation of my ideas: for me these isn’t any difference between the two.
I myself am just a microscopic part of this existence which flows on and on in a perpetual stream. Life memory from a primeval age exists in my body. I intend to be strongly conscious of it in producing my work. At the moment of birth, the amniotic fluid we had been immersed in was succeeded by a soft, swaddling cloth. The touch of cloth enters a baby's subconscious memory, and affects us still as adults, so that we feel comfortable surrounded by or touching familiar materials. -
Artist's Statement
The limestone cave, and unconscious memories of the womb…Once you retrace both their histories, you are guided back to a primordial age that we once knew intimately.
When I was a university student majoring in textiles I had the opportunity to visit a limestone cave. I was quite overwhelmed by the seductive undulations of stalactites and stalagmites, formed over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.
After much experimentation, I had the idea of not merely forming a replica of nature by copying these shapes, but of evolving and creating new shapes, through the accumulation and accretion of tens of thousands of tiny pieces of plain cloth, stitched together. This is a technique which I have stayed with for over ten years, and which I continue to develop. I have considered adding other materials to cloth in search of additional expressive power; but I firmly believe that cloth itself, by its very nature affects our emotions directly, and this is something I am exploring further. The surface texture I have arrived at is very important to me, both as a texture and as a representation of my ideas: for me these isn’t any difference between the two.
I myself am just a microscopic part of this existence which flows on and on in a perpetual stream. Life memory from a primeval age exists in my body. I intend to be strongly conscious of it in producing my work. At the moment of birth, the amniotic fluid we had been immersed in was succeeded by a soft, swaddling cloth. The touch of cloth enters a baby's subconscious memory, and affects us still as adults, so that we feel comfortable surrounded by or touching familiar materials. -
Artist's Statement
The limestone cave, and unconscious memories of the womb…Once you retrace both their histories, you are guided back to a primordial age that we once knew intimately.
When I was a university student majoring in textiles I had the opportunity to visit a limestone cave. I was quite overwhelmed by the seductive undulations of stalactites and stalagmites, formed over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.
After much experimentation, I had the idea of not merely forming a replica of nature by copying these shapes, but of evolving and creating new shapes, through the accumulation and accretion of tens of thousands of tiny pieces of plain cloth, stitched together. This is a technique which I have stayed with for over ten years, and which I continue to develop. I have considered adding other materials to cloth in search of additional expressive power; but I firmly believe that cloth itself, by its very nature affects our emotions directly, and this is something I am exploring further. The surface texture I have arrived at is very important to me, both as a texture and as a representation of my ideas: for me these isn’t any difference between the two.
I myself am just a microscopic part of this existence which flows on and on in a perpetual stream. Life memory from a primeval age exists in my body. I intend to be strongly conscious of it in producing my work. At the moment of birth, the amniotic fluid we had been immersed in was succeeded by a soft, swaddling cloth. The touch of cloth enters a baby's subconscious memory, and affects us still as adults, so that we feel comfortable surrounded by or touching familiar materials. -
Artist's Statement
The limestone cave, and unconscious memories of the womb…Once you retrace both their histories, you are guided back to a primordial age that we once knew intimately.
When I was a university student majoring in textiles I had the opportunity to visit a limestone cave. I was quite overwhelmed by the seductive undulations of stalactites and stalagmites, formed over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.
After much experimentation, I had the idea of not merely forming a replica of nature by copying these shapes, but of evolving and creating new shapes, through the accumulation and accretion of tens of thousands of tiny pieces of plain cloth, stitched together. This is a technique which I have stayed with for over ten years, and which I continue to develop. I have considered adding other materials to cloth in search of additional expressive power; but I firmly believe that cloth itself, by its very nature affects our emotions directly, and this is something I am exploring further. The surface texture I have arrived at is very important to me, both as a texture and as a representation of my ideas: for me these isn’t any difference between the two.
I myself am just a microscopic part of this existence which flows on and on in a perpetual stream. Life memory from a primeval age exists in my body. I intend to be strongly conscious of it in producing my work. At the moment of birth, the amniotic fluid we had been immersed in was succeeded by a soft, swaddling cloth. The touch of cloth enters a baby's subconscious memory, and affects us still as adults, so that we feel comfortable surrounded by or touching familiar materials. -
Artist's Statement
The limestone cave, and unconscious memories of the womb…Once you retrace both their histories, you are guided back to a primordial age that we once knew intimately.
When I was a university student majoring in textiles I had the opportunity to visit a limestone cave. I was quite overwhelmed by the seductive undulations of stalactites and stalagmites, formed over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.
After much experimentation, I had the idea of not merely forming a replica of nature by copying these shapes, but of evolving and creating new shapes, through the accumulation and accretion of tens of thousands of tiny pieces of plain cloth, stitched together. This is a technique which I have stayed with for over ten years, and which I continue to develop. I have considered adding other materials to cloth in search of additional expressive power; but I firmly believe that cloth itself, by its very nature affects our emotions directly, and this is something I am exploring further. The surface texture I have arrived at is very important to me, both as a texture and as a representation of my ideas: for me these isn’t any difference between the two.
I myself am just a microscopic part of this existence which flows on and on in a perpetual stream. Life memory from a primeval age exists in my body. I intend to be strongly conscious of it in producing my work. At the moment of birth, the amniotic fluid we had been immersed in was succeeded by a soft, swaddling cloth. The touch of cloth enters a baby's subconscious memory, and affects us still as adults, so that we feel comfortable surrounded by or touching familiar materials. -
Artist's Statement
The limestone cave, and unconscious memories of the womb…Once you retrace both their histories, you are guided back to a primordial age that we once knew intimately.
When I was a university student majoring in textiles I had the opportunity to visit a limestone cave. I was quite overwhelmed by the seductive undulations of stalactites and stalagmites, formed over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.
After much experimentation, I had the idea of not merely forming a replica of nature by copying these shapes, but of evolving and creating new shapes, through the accumulation and accretion of tens of thousands of tiny pieces of plain cloth, stitched together. This is a technique which I have stayed with for over ten years, and which I continue to develop. I have considered adding other materials to cloth in search of additional expressive power; but I firmly believe that cloth itself, by its very nature affects our emotions directly, and this is something I am exploring further. The surface texture I have arrived at is very important to me, both as a texture and as a representation of my ideas: for me these isn’t any difference between the two.
I myself am just a microscopic part of this existence which flows on and on in a perpetual stream. Life memory from a primeval age exists in my body. I intend to be strongly conscious of it in producing my work. At the moment of birth, the amniotic fluid we had been immersed in was succeeded by a soft, swaddling cloth. The touch of cloth enters a baby's subconscious memory, and affects us still as adults, so that we feel comfortable surrounded by or touching familiar materials.
Contact Details:
g-g@fiberart-jp.com
