VIDEO: Yoshihiro Suda-Carving After Nature

Meet one of Japan’s most popular artists, Yoshihiro Suda, known for his realistic sculptures and carvings of plants and flowers. Yoshihiro Suda was born in the countryside of Yamanashi Prefecture, where he grew up at the foot of Mount Fuji and lived surrounded by nature until he was 18 years old. He studied at the Tama Art University, where his love for contemporary art and wood carving began.

“From the very start until now, my idea is that the plants and flowers I carve are just a part of the work. The space around the artworks is also a part of the work.”

At the beginning of the 1990s, Suda was looking for a venue for his first exhibition. “I would walk around the city. And I noticed the parking meters along the road. I found this a very attractive space. So, I decided to pay at the parking meter and make my exhibition there.” He created a box trailer and placed it at the parking meter, where people could enter and see his artwork.

Influenced by the great Japanese sculptors, Suda pushes the limits and ideas of what a work of art is or should be. He sees the surrounding space as an essential part of the artwork itself. “Now, I have been doing my craft for more than 30 years. And it’s safe to say that your craft gets better the more you do it. But arts and crafts are something you have to cultivate inside of you all your life.”

Jens H. Jensen interviewed Yoshihiro Suda in July 2022 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum in Japan.

Yoshihiro Suda (born 1969 in Yamanash, Japan) is a Japanese artist known for his hyper-realistic sculptures of plants and flowers created in the tradition of Japanese wood carving. Major exhibitions include Ginza Weed Theory, 1993, in Tokyo, 2004, at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, and the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Arts, Kagawa in 2006. At Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Yoshihiro Suda has contributed to Standard (2001) and Naoshima Standard 2 (2006-2007) and has created the commissioned work, Weeds (2002). Suda also showed his work at Galería Elvira González, Madrid, Spain and Loock Galerie, Berlin, in Germany.

 

Jens H. Jensen interviewed Yoshihiro Suda in July 2022 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum in Japan. Camera by Yudai Maruyama, Produced by Christian Lund, Edited by Malte Bruun Fals. © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2023. Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling