The Art of Sushi and Sake
Shingo Honda

By Nancy Uyemura

Shingo Honda is currently showing at L.A. Artcore at the Union Center for the Arts. A former resident of Los Angeles who has recently moved to the big island of Hawaii, he has returned to show his new work at Lydia Takeshita’s L.A. Artcore Gallery in Little Tokyo. The work is new and different, yet somehow an evolutionary thread is woven through the pieces on exhibit. If looking deeper, past the obvious the initial essence that is part of Honda’s aesthetic is definitely there and you understand the circle that is life, that is nature. What is different is the place (which is Hawaii) and the technique (which is a giclee print done with new technology). But, the theme and the essence is the same, it is Shingo Honda.

Shingo Honda has been making art for 40 years, and each series is different from another, but not. He has made installations, prints, paintings, sculpture, and public works. Influenced by the different places where he has lived or visited, and by becoming a Zen priest, it all goes back to a moment in childhood which crystallized his ongoing theme.
“I was born in Northern Japan — snow country. As a child I was fascinated by the thin ice, which formed on a puddle of water. I’d pick up the ice, so shiny and beautiful, reflecting the sunlight, but, in a moment, it was gone. It had melted in my hand.

I liked that transient, ever-changing world and it has always been what I’ve wanted to express. The word “permanent” is unrealistic. There’s no such thing. I want to melt an irrational concept.”

Honda has worked in wood, concrete, rope, bronze, stone, canvas, paper, pencil and paint, but always, somewhere, deeply in his psyche, is the fleeting sparkle of that thin sheet of ice.
Snow Country, a novel by Nobel Prize winner, Yasunari Kawabata, is also what SHINGO HONDA calls Niigata, Japan, his place of birth in 1944. It is a place of changes. ..a place where shimmering icicles reflect the sun as it turns them into water; where spring rains regenerate summer’s abundance and the weary leaves of autumn are again replaced by the ephemeral snowflake.

Hawaii is another place of intense beauty and extreme nature. It is no wonder it drew Honda to live and work. At the same time it shows its harsh violence, it speaks of vitality, the truth of being alive, in a very direct fashion.
“Just gazing blankly at the landscape, not looking for something special, it’s obvious that nature cannot stay the same for even one moment: color, shape, size is moving, wriggling, squirming, changing constantly, and cannot be measured or judged any more than one can measure all the energy flowing in the universe. There’s nothing to do, just feel it.”

“At high noon, the glaring, dazzling rays of the sun blaze on the forest, and everything is released. A brief moment of stillness and silence comes quietly. I caught a glimpse of this secret world, but it’s an open secret: nature has nothing to hide. Then everything starts moving again.” (Honda on his High Noon series.)

During the late óOs and early 70s he was a leading member of Japan’s “Mono-ha” art movement, relating to the American conceptual minimalist movement of the same period although the Japanese worked from their own traditional aesthetics. Honda’s works from these years were sculptural installations consisting of a simple element taken from nature (e.g. a large rock or a log), and often connected by means of a heavy rope to the existing architecture. This work, he tells us, “was meant to let the materials speak for themselves — to dialogue with each other. As opposed to delivering a message these substances have their own message — their own essence of being.” One can see the connection between these very different styles of Honda’s work, different yet so much the same.

This exhibit is at LA Artcore Union Center for the Arts located at 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Gallery hours are Wednesday to Sunday 12-5p.m. The exhibition is curated by Lydia Takeshita and shows work by Simon Rahimian and Shingo Honda.

The exhibition runs until the 30th of March. Shingo Honda can be contacted by mail at General Delivery, Mountain View, HI 96771 or www.shingohonda.com.



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