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Rie Kawakami Artist Statement
 

Primarily working with iron my focus is on transcending the viewers perception of the nature of my works while exploring juxtapositions in both the objects and settings where they are installed. The purpose of my art is to develop a sense of value through objectivity.

My work aims to create a place that generates perceptions that lead us to explore things seen in stages of expansion and contraction, drawing inspiration from works of fellow artist and designers such as "Powers of Ten” by Charles and Ray Eames’s in order to put this into practice my works development by visualizing the transient invisible world through themes such as the chain reactions over long intervals. The relationship between the material and immaterial, similarities between micro to macro, the distortions of values that occur between individuals and the total over the vastness of space and time, through sculptures, installations, interactive, and site-specific works.

Iron demonstrates fascinating aspects, from a smooth polished state to the blood red oxidized transformation it endures as it constantly reacts the environment, making structural and contextual transitions. Being highly workable it expresses a multitude of textures and shapes, while as an element, it accounts for one-third of the earth's weight, generating gravitational and magnetic fields and being at the very core of our existence. It is an essential element for life, circulating through our hemoglobin, helping to distribute oxygen throughout the body, an integral part of existence both on a scale from the massive to the micro levels, the theoretical and visual inspiration of a worldview I seek and incorporate into my work.

I view my works as fossils of thought, traces of the body's actions, tapping, bending, and scraping iron sheets, devices of a balance that is repeatedly amplified to achieve stability as an activity. Universal activity as site-specific work in which the viewer experiences the vastness of time and space according to the subject matter and as works in which the earth building blocks such as soil, stone, iron powder and charcoal are integrated into transparent resin solids as if to encourage observation.

In these projects, my emphasis is on "acceptance through the senses" rather than "interpretation of language," in an attempt to create a place that leads to liberation from existing values.