Ohnishi ───── The Ishikawa International Urushi Exhibition started 26 years ago with the help of Ishikawa prefecture. Today, we would like to celebrate the opening of the tenth exhibition. Ekuan, Prof. Komatsu and I have participated in the exhibition and its assessment hoping that the exhibition would be opened to the world since the first exhibition.
Urushi is really a wonderful material and Urushi culture has a long traditional in Asia. We named this exhibition “The Internation Exhibition” in order not to forget how important Urushi is for people all around the world.
People tend to forget the mission, values and significance of Urushi because they are too swayed by the needs of the moment in their everyday lives. Now that IT revolution has strongly brought social upheaval, it is vital to delve deeply into Urushi and its conservation for the 21st century.
I think the signification of this Urushi exhibition is to continue this art form and its history both domestically here in Japan, and internationally as well.
This time we received works from Brazil and Russia. We also received a work from the Netherlands for the first time. Thus, we are confident that the intent of this international exhibition has spread to more nations and regions of the world.
I am delighted to know that each applicant from each nation or region has broadened their opportunity to share their interpretations of Urushi art that span across nations, cultures, and languages.
I wish I had assessed all actual works thoroughly but unavoidably we conducted the Preliminary Assessment based on digital images and were able to only select 72 works. Then at the Final Assessment we decided award winners.
This time applied works as a whole reflect the present. We newly established Design Category and Art Category. We had a very difficult time distinguishing between the two categories because originally design comes from artistic mind and art needs design foresight.
In present-day society, a positive economic effect plays an important role and design has become too important to ignore in the field of art.
In the Urushi arts and crafts field, quite a few objects were created that aroused our imagination. However, Urushi is not just a material to make artistic works. Urushi has developed for more than 10,000 years of deep relation with the human spiritual world. It is important for you to ask yourselves and deepen your philosophy to discover “beauty” within “function”. This time applied works include objects leaving its future to illusion as well as practical works providing opportunities for us to touch and use.
Out of the latter works I feel the world of beauty surely exists in Urushi. This is a favorable trend, so to say, a large movement from objects to functional works. I hope this trend will further be deepened.