Black Ball and Its Surroundings

 

By the way, doesn’t the term "black hole" sound a bit strange? I’ve heard of something called a black hole—a hole that swallows everything. But if you look at it from the side or the back, it’s still just a hole... Hmm. I think it should be called a black ball instead. A hole that even swallows light? Is that void truly "nothingness," or is it actually "everything" condensed into one? If that’s the case... I like it. I’ll title my work on the water’s surface Black Ball. I hope this exhibition will be like all the things that have happened around this black ball.

 

One day, I lost my sense of touch—and with it, my sense of balance.¹

For someone like me, who carelessly touched the world and built my sense of distance through shapes and objects, the loss of that initial connection to the world felt drastic. As a so-called able-bodied person, it was a severe reality shift. I had to pretend I was fine just to get through it. No, actually, I probably flailed around so much that it was harder on those around me. Thank you, everyone. It took me a long time to put this into words.

 

But what’s lost is lost. Something that is usually acquired early in childhood, almost as a natural process—I realized that re-learning it as an adult could be an interesting experience. I’ve long thought about sculpting. But I never imagined I’d have to apply that process to myself. I stepped away from conventional treatment and began reconstructing my way of engaging with the world. What I had been doing to shape the world outside, I now turned inward. It was about witnessing an occurrence—observing how things took unexpected turns, how they transformed, and choosing to follow along. It didn’t matter if I changed in the process. (In this case, both "I" and "the world" were on the same side.) I had to erase the concept of subjectivity early on and work with a sense of balance—neither too strong nor too weak.

 

What finally came together (or at least seemed to) was something that closely resembled what had been lost. But instead of calling it "that," it seeped into various places where definitions didn’t quite hold. Things that once felt fixed began to shift, increasing in abstraction. And in the moment when "presence" and "absence" coexisted as equals, friction disappeared, and I felt like I was touching the world once again. Looking back, maybe the distinction between "here" and "there" never really existed. And since this is no longer about therapy, there is no concept of a "cure."

 

The paintings and human-like figures I created were never intended as formal works. They were things I absentmindedly made at home, too personal to show anyone. Eventually, I brought these paintings and figures into the studio and began working on them again. The "like-a-thing" pieces are crude volumes covered in thick layers of white lacquer, then burned. The lacquer’s thinner ignites, causing bubbling and cracking, and soot and char create unexpected forms. When people saw them in progress, I remember saying, "I’m making stones."

 

The paintings, too—while they deal with "the body," my focus while painting is on the movement of water and pigment particles (concerns of "the other side").

 

One day, I tried sticking masking tape onto the surface of the water. It stayed. But what was beneath it—was it underwater? No, the water’s surface remained. The tape held.

In that moment, I realized—ah, these are the kinds of things I’ve always called art. I want to interact with the world in a way that allows such unexpected, untouched aspects of reality to emerge.

 

Surrounded by paintings accumulating in files, like-a-things rolling around the studio, and masking tape floating on water, I started leaving fingerprints in clay. It felt like my approach to form was being questioned. The shapes that escaped from my pinching fingers began defining the shapes on the opposite side. Since this was a kind of contract between me and the world, I decided to mold them, bringing them over to this side.

 

Puddles—what exactly are they? They appear where rain meets a dent in the ground, boldly reflecting the sky. Perhaps even before the rain falls, a dent in the ground is already a puddle in waiting.

 

In my studio, there’s a spot where I lean stick-like materials and unfinished works. One day, I grabbed a piano wire and started flicking it around. Next to me was an unfinished fiberglass piece that had been abandoned because I couldn’t figure out how it should exist in space (which I call ikata, a term I’ve always used for the way something "exists" in a space). And suddenly—it worked. I don’t even remember why I combined them. But one thing that applies to all my work is the importance of preserving authenticity. Even the screws that fix a piece to the wall matter. I create things while ensuring they don’t get absorbed into the category of "artwork" in a way that robs them of their inherent presence.

 

As a child, I often watched the northern sky with my friends around 3 PM. In my hometown, due to the relationship between the land and the wind, summer rain would come from the north. I remember being able to predict rain quite accurately just by looking at the sky and feeling the wind. Not that we ever went home to avoid it—we always ended up getting drenched in the downpour. Recently, I recalled that moment when the wind changes before the rain and your eyes instinctively turn to the northern sky.

 

The work about body was the first piece that emerged from that day. It’s a very honest work. It’s not about creating with clay, but rather creating clay itself. The form wasn’t determined by conscious decision-making but by reflex. Reflex, rather than judgment, plays a crucial role in the balance between shaping and generating. Have you ever looked at a knot in wood and thought, "Ah! A face!"?

 

I tend to place things in vague spaces—that thing, this thing, over there. I actually know what that space is, but as a child, I learned not to expose it. I never wanted to reduce it to a technique. Recently, I realized that technique-based shaping is what allows me to acknowledge the existence of that space without violating it.

Technique is not for creating—it’s for exploring. I may not exist there, but I know how to be there. And in such places, the techniques I’ve developed must all blend together, melting into something fluid.

2025.2.3

 

 

*¹: At the end of 2011, I was diagnosed with Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), a rare autoimmune disorder that caused the loss of my sense of touch and disrupted my balance, which had been based on external sensory input. It’s a disease with many variants, as its long, patchwork-like name suggests. Today, I compensate for my lost sense of touch using vibration, vision, and other sensory substitutions.

During rehabilitation, I realized that without trust in my body, I relied entirely on vision to move. This led me to discover that the so-called "clumsy" way people throw a ball (or run) happens when movement is dictated primarily by sight. Learning to trust the world beyond my visual field eventually allowed me to regain my movement. It was an experience that made me question the very concept of what it means to be "able-bodied."

 

 

Yuta Hayakawa

Works and lives in Tokyo. Completed postgraduate studies at MA, Department of Sculpture, Fine Art Course, Musashino Art University in 2010. Selected solo exhibitions include “Shape for Shape” Art Center Ongoing (2020, Tokyo), “CRITERIUM 95 Yuta Hayakawa” Mito Art Tower Contemporary Art Gallery (2018 Ibaraki), “i am you” BANANAJAM, Shenzhen (2018, China), “about body” HAGIWARA PROJECTS (2016, Tokyo). Selected group shows include “Denchu Strut” Hiragushi Denchu Sculpture Museum (2021, Tokyo), “Water/proof”KOGANAI ART SPOT Chateau 2F (2021, Tokyo), "Machines with a Heart again"BankART Station, BankART SILK,Yokohama (2019, Japan), “Sense of Humor” 21_21 Design Sight (2019, Tokyo), “Yuta Hayakawa x Akira Takaishi x Shunsuke Kano " Sapporo Odori 500-m Underground Walkway Gallery (2015, Sapporo), etc.