THE SALON BLEU

Sadaharu Horio (1939 – 2018) can be considered as one of the most important Japanese artist of his generation. He joined the Japanese avant-garde group Gutai in 1966 and has been expanding on the avant-garde spirit of Gutai with an impressive body of experimental work. He is a pioneer in modern Kobe performance art and his influence on Japan’s contemporary art scene is significant. Horio’s work seeks to capture the moment and preserve it in time. There is a Japanese expression «Ichi-go-ichi-e» which describes the originality of a single moment. «One encounter. One chance.» Each moment is unique and cannot be copied or reproduced. Horio would start every single day, whatever the circumstances may be, with the ‘marking’ (rather than painting) of random items which he would then use as a kind of canvas. This tender ceremony of repetition in itself signifies that the artist was searching for an existentialist contact with eternity. Horio had very consciously come to this daily ritual as it made sense of nonsense. His work points to the ‘sense of the all’ rather than to the sense of one individual life. That Horio held onto his daily routine also after the Kobe earthquake had shaken his world underlines the strength and determination of his daily act. It also shows that it is a signal against death, against the finite.

Sadaharu Horio’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Fifteenth Gutai Art Exhibition, Gutai Pinacotheca, Osaka (1965); Kyoto Independents (1985); the Yokohama Triennial (2005); the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2011); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2012); and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2013).