Saburo Muraoka 2010 Tokyo

Saburo MURAOKA
September 3 – October 9, 2010
TOKYO

Saburo Muraoka is renowned for his sculptures and installations that incorporate materials such as oxygen, iron, sulfur, and salt, visualizing concepts and invisible physical phenomena like heat, gravity, and sound (vibration).

This exhibition will center around his 1995 work, Oxygen – Mosquito (first presented at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition, After Hiroshima: Message from Contemporary Art).

The installation consists of white oxygen cylinders bearing English plaques with words such as “mosquito” or “amoeba,” affixed to the tanks like epitaphs. As if equating the consumption of oxygen with the very proof of existence, these white-painted cylinders manifest the traces of life with an uncanny and striking presence.

Each of the six white-painted oxygen cylinders features a small plaque inscribed with words meaning “mosquito,” “amoeba,” “earthworm,” “spirogyra,” “E. coli,” and “moss.” These minute organisms were chosen to convey that oxygen is the most fundamental substance for all life forms. At the same time, it is perhaps a manifestation of the artist’s skepticism toward the glorification of human life alone.

(Text by Motoko Suhama, from the exhibition catalog “After Hiroshima: Message from Contemporary Art”, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, p. 10)

Oxygen – Mosquito, 1995 (detail)

Storage – Ecology and Momentum of a Fly (For One Fly), 2004
Iron, fly larvae, tile,
32 x 35 x 35 cm

Left: Thalamus 2003.7.2. PM.8:46′, 2003
Paper, charcoal, eraser
50 x 65 cm