Yuichi Nakamura | Official Artist Statement

My artistic practice operates at the intersection of photography, sculpture, and physical entropy. I utilize "FRP sculptural photography"—a unique, hybrid medium that compresses traditional Japanese Washi paper and industrial polyester resin (FRP) into a tense material situation, addressing the transformation of matter and the sedimentation of time. Drawing conceptual roots from the ecological and material memory of the Ochiai River, I reconstruct temporal duration and traumatic deceleration into tangible, three-dimensional forms.

 

My methodology is informed by distinct trajectories of physical engagement: three decades of precision craftsmanship in optical glass manufacturing, the temporal suspension experienced during a high-velocity racing crash, and the spatial isolation of professional diving. Rather than autobiographical credentials, these experiences function as the ontological source of my practice—converging in a technical discipline that interrogates how light, velocity, and pressure alter physical matter and human perception.

​

The Unified Philosophy: The Circulation of Water and the Armor of FRP

 

At the absolute core of my artistic practice lies a rigorous contrast between two forces: the fluid element of “Water”—materialized through the organic fibers of traditional Japanese paper (Washi)—and the rigid, unyielding barrier of “FRP” (Fiber Reinforced Plastics). ​

​

Throughout my 30-year career in optical glass manufacturing, water was the indispensable agent required to grind and polish lenses to transmit pure light. Similarly, the landscape of the Ochiai River, whose ecological memory I have pursued since childhood, is a manifestation of water as a fluid state of time. To anchor this fluid matrix of memory, I select traditional Japanese Washi paper as my primary substrate, a material crafted by interlacing organic fibers through vast amounts of water. To gaze into water is to observe the intricate web of material and perceptual relations.

 

Yet, to preserve this fragile, liquid memory within physical reality, I require the structural armor of industrial FRP. During a high-velocity racing crash in my former career, my vehicle flipped and became airborne. Inside that inverted, decelerated capsule of time, while the world turned in slow-motion and my life flashed before me, it was the industrial polyester resin shell that kept my physical flesh and the matrix of memory intact.

 

By altering the chemical composition to render industrial FRP transparent while retaining the internal glass fibers, I encapsulate the suspended, airborne timeline of memory on Washi into a temporarily arrested, vulnerable state. The eventual yellowing of the resin over decades is not degradation; like the growth rings of a tree, it is a chronological inscription—the irreversible record of time endured alongside the collector.

 

This is “The Circulation of Water and the Armor of FRP”—a material situation where organic fragility and industrial strength, liquidity and rigidity, are compressed not to achieve a superficial eternity, but to register the inevitable, destructive entropy of matter and time. The resin does not witness; it accumulates the physical violence of duration. ---