Teruhisa Suzuki
Research project
Biomorphism
Project summary
As part of the Biomorphisme project – sensitive and conceptual approaches to living forms – Teruhisa Suzuki creates an evolving work at the Friche-la Belle de Mai during the Biomorphisme exhibition (November 10, 2018 – February 10, 2019) .
The Biomorphisme program (exhibition and colloquia) is supported by the Centre Gilles Gaston Granger, a joint research unit in philosophy and comparative epistemology AMU/CNRS, and proposed by Sylvie Pic and Julien Bernard, as a continuation of the project initiated by Julie Pelletier and Julien Bernard in 2014 in Constance, Germany.Details of activities:https://biomorphisme.hypotheses.org/
Teruhisa SUZUKIintervents at international events. He creates monumental sculptures and site-specific installations based on fundamental living forms (shell, egg) and the idea of shelter. Each installation offers a space, sometimes equipped with micro-scopes, inside which visitors can observe their surroundings. The environment is then brought up to date in a questioning process triggered by the filter of the installation, conceived as a multi-purpose sensor.
ApproachFor several years now, my work has focused on the issue of light and its relationship to the environment. This light can be direct, subdued or captured by pinholes used as a metaphor for sensory organs. For me, it’s mainly a question of offering visitors shelters made from the resources available on site, from which they can enjoy a sensitive experience linked to the idea of the living. My installations, conceived and realized in accordance with the contexts in which they are presented, engage visitors in a dialogue between their perception of what is natural and their perception of human activity, mainly through the use of light and its capture by paper or fabric screens.Each installation is organized around the creation of a shelter inside which visitors can observe the flickering, inverted images of their surroundings; I invite them to put themselves in the shoes of a living being who captures multiple types of information – light and color, heat and cold, movement or the caress of the wind – and interprets them using organs that either do not retain all the data or transform it according to circumstances.Often consisting of an assemblage of micro pinhole cameras, the installation places the visitor in the position of a motionless observer immersed in a multiplied environment, whose ever-changing light invites us to open up and question our own perceptions: what am I seeing, what am I perceiving, where does this light and its colors come from, what does it represent-signify? Why does it shiver? Who interprets it, me or the installation itself? While an environment becomes “natural” and loses its singularity for the person who regularly walks through it, it becomes actualized in the perceptive questioning triggered by the installation’s filter, conceived as a multi-purpose sensor.I work in natural environments that have been preserved or marked by natural or technological events, and I’m also interested in the history of the place, its usual practices and its uses.
