BLACK CORRECTION (with cultural suicides, social scatology, educational feces, expressionistic ejaculation, and you) 37 - 42


media/size: oil on canvas, water-based marker/ 41.0 x 24.0 cm each


An exceptional series to the “definition 1” which refers to Language-related issues that PREMISE describes, but instead, has political and social elements employed as iconographic and semiotic approaches.
Besides, this series is also exceptional to “definition 4” which prescribes the elimination of my direct physicality. I have painted them in a normal way with brushes grabbed by my dominant hand.
The non-language-related behaviors and employing direct physicality of my own on the series are developed out of the series Self-denial Practice (physical).


This series is composed of the following independent definitions.

Definition 1.
Mentality of Japanese people is still Pre-modernistic.

Definition 2.
“Modernism” means the process of evolution that negate irrational convention which was in or before the Pre-modern era, and the process that seeks to produce universal value.

Definition 3.
“Post-modern (Post-modernism)” is one of the versions of “Modernism” that when people realize its dead end, try overcoming it by extracting and recombining arbitrarily isolated elements from elements that compose a system of linear progressivism of Modernism.

Definition 4.
According to Definition 1, basically, Japanese people cannot act in Post-modernistic behavior. (There is a total difference in background rational thought between correct Post-modern in the West and wrong Post-modern which Japanese people have interpreted. Japanese are too naive about that fact.)

Definition 5.
According to Definition 1 and Definition 4, Japanese people must experience correct Modernism through their rationality.

Definition 6.
According to Definition 5, I Yoshihiro Kikuchi am a Modernist.

Definition 7.
Japanese culture superficially exists as Post-modern which has referred to Western cultures, especially American one.

Definition 8.
According to Definition 1 and Definition 7, Japanese people and their society have fundamental discord between their mentality and physical and informative aspects in which they are.

Definition 9.
This series “BLACK CORRECTION” takes on the matter which Definition 8 states.

Definition 10.
My philosophy as an artist “be a Modernist”, as stated in Definition 6, exists as a system that suppresses the s projection of personal hobbies and diversions into art works.

Definition 11.
“BLACK CORRECTION” has the function to release elements that are suppressed by the system stated in Definition 10. That means social suicide/rational hanging/excretion and vomitus of Modernism.

Definition 12.
Objective of suppression and release stated in Definition 10, and Definition 11, is things that have been unconsciously shared and reflected things in Japan's unique overwhelming sexual services.



Detailed description:
I usually make works by motive rooted in individualism that is in rational progressivism of Modernism, which refuses no-self-dependent recombination of existing symbolic value which is based on Post-modernistic behavior (however I do it extremely skeptical about the personal aesthetic decisions which should be done by myself as the subject to do it because self-denial attitude is the most rational behavior). It is an attempt to relive but relativize Modernism on an individual level as a citizen of Japan to try to be conscious of the problem that there is no society which is the sum of the self-dependent will of individuals that other developed countries have, which means that Japanese people have strong predispositions toward collectivism, that is, Japan is still out of the frame of Modernism which is based on rationalism, though Japan’s marked economic development in the past has given us misunderstanding that we have succeeded in modernization.

The motive rooted in individualism for me is an underlying misanthropic tendency. It is the reason for me to do “negation of humanity”. But again, the works made through the tendency by myself are realized by the following logically conceptual method.

When I try to negate humanity, then its objects are issues related to “Language” and “Eroticism”, which are stripped out and nullified the value and function.
Because Language, and Eroticism which means debauch that is combined with the system of social taboo, are the general ideas human being only has, and “Art” is the general idea human being only has; therefore I think those ideas can have in-depth relations each other.
By the way, Takashi Murakami has referred to Otaku-culture which was a culture by the minority of minorities, as a method to paradoxically affirm the value of Japanese contemporary cultures’ weakness. He declared that Otaku-culture is Japan’s original culture which is the result of Japan’s no-self-dependent autism and it is the advantage that other countries never have; he concluded its social background that is a homogeneous society in which does not exist hierarchy, is the thing that we must affirm.
I agree with his recognition affirming Otaku culture as Japan’s original and its social background, but I disagree with his whole affirmation. That is, self-dependent culture has never been able to be realized. When we try connecting myopically to the Western movements after Post-modern by the affirmation, we forget that it is to boycott embodying the zeitgeist of Modernism. When the saturation of Modern society which people’s free will built appeared, the thing which they drew on to overcome the situation is Post-modern. That is another version of Modernism. Because the progressive attitude to try producing “new” things to recombine already existing symbols is absolutely Modernism. That is, any self-dependent culture cannot be established. This point of view is important to Japanese artists, especially those who refer to works by artists after the conceptualism era, like neo-conceptualism.

Otaku culture on which, at least until my generation, those who have not touched is overwhelmingly majority. Instead, we have absorbed many things while incorporating our complexity against The West where we believe that the correctness of all cultures is in. The fact is not only about art, but to me, it is more signal about music that I have been most interested in since I was a teenager. The latest painting series titled BLACK CORRECTION (with cultural suicides, social scatology, educational feces, expressionistic ejaculation, and you) is related to the issue.

Since 2014, I have started a series of work Self-denial Practice (physical). The series has been made by not following the rule that I have required myself for the above negating of humanity. There my conceptual logicality has been negated but my intuitional physicality has been taken. That was, to shift the object to be negated by myself from Humanity to my individual rationality.

BLACK CORRECTION has expressionistically acted with the most conservative media that oil painting, to do the above negation of my rationality. Then, my unconsciousness is suppressed by stoic rationalism that I unconsciously took when my rationality tries to negate Humanity, and influences built by popular culture (including independent or underground culture having antisocial elements) in my personal history, are referred to and apparently affirmed. however, it is also self-denial. Because to indecently release personal suppression equals social suicide (as well as cultural). In addition, the apparent expressionism humorously imitates the “wrong” approach that many Japanese artists tend to do, that is to senselessly refer to Art History in The West.
This is rooted in my serious cognition that myself as the subject is included in the object to be done “negation of humanity”, then self-defeated is inevitable.
As above, the reason why I have taken the word “CORRECTION” and “BLACK”, is a paradoxically inverted self-education that equals universal edification.

There is one work related to BLACK CORRECTION, that is Terrible Events I made in 2015. ”Terrible Events” is (actually I say it “Hidoi Event”, hidoi means terrible in Japanese) the title of shows I have organized with friends in Sendai to show some extreme performances, sometimes inviting guest artists from overseas. I have used two names at the shows; one is my actual name to play serious performance, and the other is a joke name that Matsutake No Hama which means Beach of Mushrooms (the idea taken from a Japanese popular chocolate name) to play hilarious performance. I took the initials M, N, and H and made a logo with them. Most of paintings from BLACK CORRECTION have the logo. Therefore, by making BLACK CORRECTION, I have been separated into two different characters.




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