Many people seem to understand the perception of distance and time as related, as can be seen in the phrases “the distant past” and “the near future.”* When I found this out, I felt that I understood part of the reason that my interest is drawn to the medium of sculpture.
The distance and the relationship between the artwork and myself, and the perspective possessed by the work itself, are conveyed to me as time. Time that someone, somewhere, has spent is taking the form of mass before my eyes.
In China, they use the term “Kung Fu.” I think many people will associate that word with Bruce Lee, but it means the “time and effort” put into something. This term is still used in the world of Zen Buddhism, which was transmitted from China, and I learned about a life lived in awareness of Kung Fu in ascetic training when I was an itinerant monk.
The frameworks of sculpture and Zen are perhaps no more than entry portals. To see the time someone has spent (which is) internalized in what is before my eyes. My interest is drawn to this wordless communication.
*See Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Chikumashobo, 1988.
Kanji Hasegawa
Born in 1990, currently resides in Mie Prefecture, Japan. He received a B.F.A. at Tokyo University of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Sculpture in 2014, and an M.F.A. at Tokyo University of the Arts, the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Department of Sculpture in 2016. In the same year, after ascetic training at Daihonzan Eiheiji, the principal temple of the Soto Zen school, he became a monk. This unique intersection of artistic education and monastic discipline deeply informs his creative practice.
In 2024, he returned to secular life and continues to explore the transformation of time, history, and culture through his sculptural expression. His works, which fuse fragility and universality, question shifting values and the very meaning of existence.