The title of the exhibition, Entelequia, draws on a definition attributed to Aristotle for the state of being at the beginning of attaining form or development. Thence Aristotle is reputed to have gone on to define enrgy as an act verging on 'Entelequia' and characerised by the attraction that 'entelequia' exerts over it.
Akin to a philosopher, Nori Ushijima, born 1956 in Kumamoto, strives in his paintings, to express the quest for the existential meaning of life. “I paint because I think; because I want to know why I think, why I am alive and why I am here,” he says, and he rules out nothing to achieve his aim. Ushijima is a painter who has charted his own course. Places as diverse as Japan, Peruggia, Rome, San Sebastián and Barcelona make up the “scenario” of his work; a blend of influences which entwine the culture of his own country, that of Italy, of the Basque country and of Catalonia. It is, perhaps, due to this that his work beckons to us and enthralls us from a spectrum of angles and perspectives.
His influences, many and awe-inspiring, are woven and intersected with sage japonese mastery. Capable of combining, apparently irreconcilable ancient techniques such as “al fresco con el encausto”, oils and tempera , Ushijima strives to penetrate the philosophy and wonder-world of the master alchemists. Investigation and experiment are his constant.
Once achieved this goal, Ushijima sets out on his own, distancing himself from the great masters he so admires , to create an intrinsic genre, somewhere between the figurative and the baroque, leading him to his current work. He has, laboriously, methodically and inspirationally moved on from a more abstract painting to a more figurative,to finally achieving a glorious union in which both aspects mix and blend in harmony and disharmony.
His powerful imagery, straight out of the history of art , with references that stretch , all-inclusively , from the great renaissance masters to our nearest and dearest masters, forms a classical yet modern concept of space and paint. A concept in which tradition and avant-garde , modern and post-modern , are one; thereby creating a truly eclectic oeuvre, in the strictest sense of the word.
This modern master´s evolution is unfailing in his quest for the symbols and symbolism which reflect the human soul ; ever-haunted by confronted sentiments, love and hate, joy and sadness, rise and fall. His work, poetically yet savagely , depicts the horror of human-ness, the speed of all-devouring time and the society we have created and in which we live, revel, suffer and exist. Ushijima has always been drawn to the human and the divine, which he pursues and expresses in painting, drawing, etching, oils, tempera, pencil and mixed techniques; an eclectic, who draws and colours his sage and complex constructions, his dreams, real and fantasy, to create a world parallelly real and fictitious.
From this, his humanly divine universe, real and magical figures on stained or intermingled backgrounds emerge. The actors, men and women, couples, indomitable youths, the old, anchored in a past already lived, evoke great nostalgia and certain romanticism. The pieces he now offers, “Entelequia”, “Minotauro”, “Leda and swan”, “Efesto” or “Epimeteo y Prometeo”, once again, show us this artist´s great insight into space and time. A space from which men and demons, women and gods, chaos and cosmos , emerge and entwine in uncanny symbiosis , to seduce the onlooker into his work, deep and profound, from multiple directions and meanings.
Entelequia is synonymous of the vital force in the vitalist doctrine, as is the painting of Ushijima; an echoing mural- like presence, loaded with perspective, foreshortening, dynamism and symbolism in almost all his compositions, from which the role-players, exuding energy and strength, emerge and are condensed.
Nori Ushijima is an autor of great strength, a researcher of the ancestral memory of his origins. His work knows no concessions. It journeys from the inner to the outer, from the within to the without. It is an introspective evolution , which reflects again and yet again, his personal delirio: his obsessión for and with the essence of being. Entelequia draws us, once again, into this universe and submerges and holds us in the depths and depth of his painting. (Text based on narrative by Cristina de la Fuente, translated by Conor MacCarthy).
Galería de Arte, Donostia-San Sebastián, 14 April-17 May 2008
