Koji Hatakeyama b. 1956, Japanese

"Bronze casting is about pouring molten metal into a mould, but it is also me pouring in my own consciousness.  My consciousness mingles with the bronze, and something emerges as a result.

There is such a thing as a sense of distance from materials.  When the workings of one’s mind become too close to a material, its presence, for some reason, seems to fade.  Objects and materials have an elusive something that, if encroached upon, hides itself away.  

If one keeps one’s mind at an appropriate distance, an external feeling of something being born starts to hover in the gap between the maker and the about-to-be-made. This causes objects or materials to try to hold on to their elusive something. This is perhaps the moment when, in the depths of spirit and matter, an “extra something” is born.

 In any work that moves one’s heart, there unquestionably resides an “extra something”. Maintaining an appropriate distance, this floats about a viewer as an indefinable aura of tension.

 One way to search for beauty may indeed be to keep one’s mind at a sufficient distance to be able to perceive the presence of the “extra something”. The concept of “as it is” found in Japanese aesthetics is precisely this idea of the mind of the beholder maintaining an appropriate distance from the object beheld. In my case, with the little I have taught myself about how to keep an appropriate sense of distance from my materials, I embrace bronze in the spirit of “as it is”.

Koji Hatakeyama