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Signed, titled and dated on the bottom.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the leading trends of Minimalism and Conceptual Art often overlooked sculpture as a medium. The sculptor Toya Shigeo (1947-) is one of the artists who redefined sculpture by challenging its erasure and the denial of its “creative relevance” by creating it anew. After studying sculpture at Aichi University of the Arts, in the 1970s Toya began to pursue a career in sculpture earnestly. Toya’s signature style is evident in Bamboo Grove and From 'Borders' V, revealing the consistent investigation into the state of human existence through the structure of sculpture.

This work, titled Woods , was made in 1987 and is part of a wider series called 'Woods' that Toya had been working on since 1984. It employs the distinctive methodology of wrapping ash powder and paint made from burnt wood shavings around the tips of carved wood, creating a protective layer around the carved wood.

Since the early 1980s series From 'Carving', Toya has used an electric chainsaw to explore the simple question of how to incorporate a diagonal gaze into a rectilinear tree. When the surface is shaved with a knife, the shaved part becomes a “negative” and the original surface emerges as a “plus”. By repeatedly creating this unevenness, the wood reveals its internal structure from underneath the surface, which is the external. Then, by arranging these exposed internal structures in a bundle of diagonal lines they create 'woods' in a space.

“When I walk in the woods, I feel like I am being constantly watched. It is not by a gaze that confronts you head-on on an unobstructed flat ground, but a sign that comes from all directions, and is not a human gaze at all. I try to return this gaze by moving my own gaze in all directions, such as into the crevices in trees, between the trees, underfoot, up and down the slopes around me. But I feel that I cannot achieve this without opening my heart up and standing naked before these gazes, confronting these signs, and colliding with each other. This is expressed as a bundle of diagonal lines rather than a dualistic gaze of horizontal and vertical.”

For Toya, Woods represent this “bundle of diagonal lines” philosophy, intertwining a diverse and complex set of values into a whole. This piece is one of Toya’s most significant works that confronts these ontological questions through sculpture and encapsulates the defining vision of Toya’s oeuvre.

Satani Gallery, Tokyo