SUMI YASUO (JAPAN, 1925-2015)

Yasuo Sumi joined the radical Gutai Art Association in 1955 to seek new innovative ways for making art. With encouragements from Shozo Shimamoto, Sumi grew more ambitious with his oil-based creative expressions, incorporating different painting techniques and tools to spark for diverse ways to express with oil. He paints with various objects, including vibrator, abacus, traditional Japanese umbrella. Unrestricted by the canvas, he also paints on different surfaces, such as paper and netting. Sumi has actively contributed to important exhibitions in both Japan and overseas, and was invited to the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993.

Sumi wrote in a piece titled My Concept of Art , "When I create my works, my feelings are a mix of yakekuso (desperation), fumajime (absence of seriousness) and charanporan (irresponsibility). Yakekuso is for me the condition of complete spiritual freedom, in which I become free from any limit and also my ability in itself becomes infinite. Fumajime is the refusal of the past. In the human society there have always been many codes, laws and rules, from the past till now. The refusal of all those rules is nothing but the future. At last, for charanporan I mean "the return to the real human shape". In other words, if the bonds of the society and those of the family did not exist, I think that in those conditions everything would be "charanporan". Man by nature has a great power, and when this power is expressed with desperation, absence of seriousness and irresponsibility, it becomes the manifestation of his true form." From the writing, it is observed that freedom and release of the subconscious are critical points in his approach for art.