Relief '80-8 Relief ’80-8

When he made an impressive debut in the exhibitions "Between Man and Matter and Aspects of New Japanese Art", Susumu Koshimizu was still in his mid-twenties. At the time, he was considered an artist belonging to the "Mono-ha", the group of young artists who presented the materials of iron, wood, stone, or paper in little modified form. But his later works often contain fragments of figurative images and have a surface that is carefully finished. In this "Relief '80-8," the two pieces that make up the pair look simple enough: They are both made of nine boards and are carved in the surface with a circle and a line respectively. But when examined closer, the work reveals that there is a contrast, enhanced by the meticulously finished surface, between the flat and curved surfaces in the left piece, and between the straight and curved lines in the right. The work probably takes the images from the earth and water. The two reliefs, which remind us of a puddle and a stream, make a kind of an abstract version of the traditional Japanese dry landscape which also represents water.