Art is everywhere in Es Racó d'Artà. Today we dedicate ourselves to a very special artist whose works you can see and feel in different parts of this magical place. He is Hiroshi Kitamura and was born in Hokkaido (Japan) in 1955. In 2012 he settled with his partner Marta in Camallera, a small village in the Empordà. His latest journey in search of the roots of the rural world.
"Exactly half of my body and my life is in Japan and the other half is here, so it's completely hybrid. The feeling of being divided can sometimes cause conflict in me, but sometimes it can also do positive things for me. The mother, the language, the culture I belong to is Japanese. There are feelings that cannot be transferred exactly. My molecules have the memory of there, but I also look for the culture here. I'm not interested in the differences (of which there are thousands), but in the things we have in common. For example, sadness is a common feeling, even if it has different causes."
Despite his academic training as a sculptor and engraver, he is more of a self-taught artist, because once he reaches the limits of technique, he does not try to surpass them, but seeks his own path. Hiroshi uses the materials at his disposal to create. Pencil, earth, cement, titanium lux, pigment, glue, paper, bitumen. He rescues from a felling, a storm or a bonfire what others discard, getting them, after passing through his hands, to acquire a new life, beyond the form. He never knows what he will find because "It is the materials that find me. The forests are full of life. I approach the broken, rotten, damp materials. In front of you there are always elements - logs, branches, stones, moss... - with which, as in Ikebana, I can transform into a composition that finally has the place it occupies in space. The gaps or voids he leaves are fundamental elements in the overall perception". He chooses the material very conscientiously, he chooses everything that is accessible, attainable, close, he does not choose something special, but what surrounds his habitat. No need to look beyond what is here and now.
"All these woods or branches are born here, they belong to this land. That's why I use them. It's organic matter from this land, and there's something that seeps in and goes through, in that sense. It's a branch that has its life. It's already dry or dead from pruning, but its bending has survived. Its bending has a cause, like a person's life. It is not linear, it branches out, it crosses with me, a shoot comes out, another path is born, it seeks the sun, it seeks other things.... There is another path. I converse with each branch and admire it. That is the way I relate to the material of my work. It is a very deep relationship. My feeling is like this vegetable matter that has the power of life and its beauty. Once I create a work, it no longer belongs to me."
Photo credits: Astra Liebowitz, Jean-Marie Del Moral, Hiroshi Kitamura
