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Object, objectify. Our human
experience is shaped by living on a planet
filled with objects that become part of our
memory, conscious and sub-conscious. In closets
and tabletops, personal objects take on lives
of their own from our stories associated
with them. Yoshimoto's work, declining feng
shui rigor, speaks of the artist's personal
history, his artistic decisions, and a continued
search for a creative vision and voice to
describe experiences common to all of us.
MB: Based
on the history of your work; has sub-urban
themes to describe your work remained important?
WY:
I think that suburbia will always inform my
ideas and materials, growing up in L.A. and
the South Bay, the ideas I explore, my experiences,
and observations still continue to return.
My concerns have evolved, the language I use
to describe the theme has changed, but I try
to keep my artistic growth moving in a straight
line.
MB:
Has the use of the hardware cloth (a type
of grided wire) changed the meaning in your
work?
WY: By
using this material it has allowed me to
bring other artistic concerns into play.
The structure brought a mathematical and
organization to the work and gives each piece
a specific size and volume. By creating these
cages it has freed me up from the use of
and preciousness of the object, the focus
now also deals with my concerns about painting,
sculpture, and photography rather than a
personnel agenda. By being self- supporting,
the cages have created for me a “given” format
to start from and structure that can change
in size and shape.
MB: What
is the significance of using a "cage" or
a "frame" as a structure?
WY: Artists
have used this material for generations including
Joseph Cornell, someone who I appreciate
and reference constantly. So the structure
as a box was a natural progression to me.
Also my time spent in my studio looking
downtown at the World Trade Center helped
me develop a dialog with architecture and
form. The building as container, or a collection
of information systems, stories, and personnel
history was an early influence in this work.
MB: Has
the theme of "East-coast/ west coast" as
an idea continued to influence you in the
last 3 to 4 years?
WY: The
questions I have tried to discuss recently
have been more universal in ideas and not
so self-referential. The formalness of the
work speaks from questions developed on the
East coast, minimalism, its history of painting.
The use of mass produced objects, collage,
assemblage has a history on the West coast
so I guess it underlies within the work.
My ideas have become more focused and those
two influences have become more cohesive,
working together to create a singular image
- voice and stylization.
MB: The
objects in the work over the past 3-4 years
are more repetitive, would you elaborate
the process and thinking that goes into this
newer work?
WY: My
materials, I have always felt, come into
my life as an ebb and flow. If I keep myself
open to experience, they seem to find me
and show up in different ways. Whether they
are found, bought, at a tag sale, Goodwill,
or given to me, the material becomes a part
of my personality, an extension of my voice.
I have tried to take the preciousness of
each object out of play and use materials
that can be reproduced or bought in bulk,
trying to wrestle out new meaning from them
by juxtaposition, transformation, and form.
MB: The
light coming into your current studio
is vastly different from your previous studio.
Is this an important influence on your
work?
WY: It
brought the work off the wall. It was a big
change, the work before was hung traditionally,
flat on the wall like painting. I had always
toyed with the idea of moving painting, thus
the sculpture hanging on the wall became
two dimensional, changing as the viewer moves
around the work. I always like to work in
changing light, being a photographer the
play of shadows is always important, as is
the design of color, texture, and the way
light affects the work. By using space the
sculptural aspects are more apparent, also
revealing the materials in a different way
and making use of the light and transparency.
MB: It
seems as though the natural light informs
how the viewer experiences the work. How
is the light a part of the piece itself?
WY: I would
love to do a show with a track light so a
viewer can experience a day’s movement
of the Sun. By changing the quality of light,
the experience of the work and subtleness
would be revealed in a way that was inter-active
and self-discovering.
MB: The
idea of a Japanese screen has a long history
in your work. Would you elaborate on that
idea and its development with the use of
hardware cloth?
WY: The
use of the Japanese screen has been in my
vocabulary for a long time. Studying Sumi-I
and silk painting while a child at the Gardena
Buddhist Church started my interest in that
format. When looking for my visual language
I went toward something that would reference
my upbringing and heritage. Instead of characters
(kanji) I used objects to tell the story,
each have there own meaning and persona.
Taking it farther, each square on the grid
became a location for information or a character,
and within the whole it fit into a system
that would inform the work and create the
image. The vertical format and the cage was
a instant connection to the buildings that
surrounded me and the city I live in. The
grid became windows and each window had a
story and contained its own history. Also
with this change I began to bring ideas of
photography into the picture, grain, pixels,
with roots in the artist Chuck Close.
Yoshimoto
is a fourth generation Japanese American
whose family has a history of over a hundred
years as Americans, originally from Hawaii.
He works as a commercial photographer and
in film production while continuing to develop
as an artist.
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