FUNASAKA Yoshisuke
(Japan 1939– )
- Title
- My space and my dimension-M-22
- Place of origin
-
Japan
- Period
- Heisei period 1989 - → Japan
- Year
- 1989
- Media category
- Materials used
- woodcut, screenprint and embossing
- Edition
- 14/30
- Dimensions
-
60.0 x 45.0cm image; 74.0 x 53.0cm sheet;
- Signature & date
- Signed and dated l.r., pencil "Y. Funasaka 1989".
- Credit
- Gift of the artist 1993
- Accession number
- 414.1993
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
Born in Gifu Prefecture, and educated at the Tama University of Art from which he graduated in oil painting in 1962, Funasaka still resides in Tokyo. Since his days as a student when his part-time work in a linoleum store enabled him to acquire trimmings which he used to make linocuts, Funasaka has diligently experimented with diverse print techniques, often mixing several methods in the production of one print.
Funasaka's prints are cool, masterful arrangements of colours and shapes. He carefully defines his colours, balancing their shapes in presentations of rhythm and tension to create a space of his own. His concern with the formal relationships of shapes and spaces is reflected in his titles which are all sequential variations on the theme of 'my space and my dimension'. To obtain dimension and to create shadows and interplay, he uses such disparate devices as collage, applied styrofoam (of varying depths), perforations and embossing. It is the tensions of forms within spaces that is the focus of his work.
Funasaka will often work with a particular 'trademark' for many years. For about two decades from 1957 the focal point of his prints was the soft contours of a lemon in which lemon forms were the only natural ones in an otherwise abstract composition. Now his prints contain only abstract shapes and for some years he has been concerned with the colours and placement of the unmatched vertical poles seen in this print. In a classic Oriental tradition, the dominant white spaces have positive values, constituting the matrix of the composition in which the peripheral corporeal forms are evolved and accentuated.
Jackie Menzies, Contemporary Japanese Prints: The Urban Bonsai, 1992, pg. 28.
- Bibliography (1)
-
Jackie Menzies (Australia) (Author), Contemporary Japanese Prints : The Urban Bonsai, Sydney, 1992, 28, 31 (colour illus.). cat.no. 10
- Exhibition history (11)
-
The Urban Bonsai, Queensland Art Gallery, 04 Mar 1992–04 May 1992.
The Urban Bonsai, National Art Gallery, Wellington, 20 Jun 1992–09 Aug 1992.
The Urban Bonsai, Christchurch Art Gallery, 12 Sep 1992–29 Oct 1992.
The Urban Bonsai, Manawatu Art Gallery, 13 Nov 1992–10 Jan 1993.
The Urban Bonsai, The George Adams Gallery, Victorian Arts Centre, 18 Mar 1993–25 Apr 1993.
The Urban Bonsai, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 08 May 1993–01 Aug 1993.
The Urban Bonsai, Lewers Bequest and Penrith Regional Art Gallery, 11 Mar 1994–24 Apr 1994.
The Urban Bonsai, The Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, 19 May 1994–19 Jun 1994.
The Urban Bonsai, Campbelltown Arts Centre, 15 Jul 1994–21 Aug 1994.
The Urban Bonsai, Moree Plains Gallery, 11 Nov 1994–24 Dec 1994.
The Urban Bonsai, Tweed River Regional Art Gallery, 01 Feb 1995–05 Mar 1995.
