Ramon Todo: 7000 Basalt

The exhibition will feature the latest works of Todo, who moved from Japan to Europe more than ten years ago and is now based in Dusseldorf. The exhibition title is taken from one of the displayed works, which suggests an interesting relationship to the 1982 project titled 7000 Eichen from Documenta 7, where artist Joseph Beuys planted 7000 oak trees and set up basalt rocks. Our exhibition will explore Todo’s attitudes towards the relationship of fine art to society.
Two years ago, the Kanagawa Prefectural Gallery held an exhibition titled Nichijo / Bachigai (Everyday Life / Another Space) Other than this, however, there have been few opportunities to see collections of Todo’s works. His most familiar pieces are cut stones flanking layered glass, which display a great aesthetic beauty while also revealing the profound concepts that lie behind them. The artist selects the stones on walks through historic landscapes, such as Berlin or the Normandy Coast. He makes his inventions by inserting glass?a material with a different expression and temperature?thereby provoking our imagination into considering the historical connotations that lie beyond the objects’ surface and form. In the upcoming exhibition, various forces will react with each other within the spatial installation of the stones, thereby creating a new magnetic field altogether.
For the first time in Japan, this exhibition will include drawings by the artist that reveal his everyday routine. Also on display will be works where he has is inserted glass into books?thereby demonstrating the existence of a consistent concept running through his works, even when he uses materials that are quite different from stone. By replacing the content of books (which inform us about thoughts or the state of the world) with glass? whose transparency reveals the letters lying underneath?the heaviness somehow encourages viewers to ponder the relationship between the books (each of which was thoughtfully selected and installed in position) just as carefully as they would interpret the world at-large. Here, we sense that the artist’s actions of selection and intervention?as well as our own actions of interpreting the world through his exhibited works?have allowed the fine arts to forge a tangible connection between ourselves and society in its rawest form.

There are always stories of 'Time' behind Todo's artworks. The artist structured his style centered with various forms of things collected by walking on the theme of 'uniqueness of place.' The most representative artwork would be the ones he made during his stay in German, and the cutting stone artworks from historical sites in various countries around the world, with polishing and embedding laminated glass between them. The Basalt series uses the lined pillar made of basalt for installation which the artist got inspiration from Joseph Beuys's project 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks) and basalt installation that he saw at Documenta 7. Moreover, his book series include books of western philosophy, novel, bible and hymns to create artworks by two methods: inserting glasses between books or solidifying the pages with resin. Todo's works are very much demanded both inside and outside of Japan, being a combination of what he felt intimately about Western European civilization during his staying at Düsseldorf for more than 10 years and of Japanese aesthetics. Having moved back to Japan on Great East Japan Earthquake, Todo is creating artworks using debris from famous architecture demolished in the course of urban metabolism of the society, or cultured pearls fostered in his hometown of Uwajima .