Gallery-Neo.tokyo | "Reverse Rotation" Atsushi Koyama Solo Show

It seem that the Universe is split into minus and plus, left and right, low and high, doesn’t it? Or maybe it is better to say that it consists of the continuous game of these oppositions. I am not sure. But it is insistently dualistic: this one or the one opposite to this one. Then, there is repetition: what is chosen tends to repeat itself, so one left will bring another left and another left. Or, better, it is the same left; it just runs in a circle. I imagine it as if standing in the center of a roulette wheel or fortune ring (just like in some paintings by Atsushi Koyama). From the center I move the roulette wheel to the right, it generates another right, this right moves to the right around me and comes back as a right.

Or, I move this ring to the left, it gives birth to a minus, which rotates around my back and comes back to where I made it from the other side.
And then there is the most mysterious part of it all: why do we generate resistance, and lock ourselves into the perception that life is some kind of accumulation of accidents and luck, when it is so obvious that every action of ours has a consequence, and the present state is the result of previous actions? All it takes, in the end, is to be able to locate yourself in the center of that wheel. I invite you to join us in launching The Reverse Rotation.

Rodion TR
Frantic Gallery Director

“The Reverse Rotation”
Atsushi Koyama Solo Show
Wed., August 28 – Sun., September 1, 2019, 10:00-20:00
Commune 2^nd Midori-so Gallery Space

Online Catalog

Gallery Talk by Atsushi Koyama and Rodion TR, Fri., August 30, 17:00 – 19:00
Reception: Fri., August 30, 19:00 – 21:00
Lecture 1: “Jet Engines and Dharma Wheels: On the Mechanisms of Karma” by Rodion TR on Sat., August 31, 13:00 – 15:00
Lecture 2: “Koyama-san, what do you underline in your science books?” by Atsushi Koyama, Sun., September 1, 13:00 – 15:00

Facebook Event Page| More about the artists: Atsushi Koyama

　After two years of intensive research and studio work developing his MANMACHINE project, Atsushi Koyama has finally brought it to the point where synthesis between machine and human, both in the painting and in the process of creation, is no longer a metaphor. Koyama creates a machine that helps him to incorporate a superhuman element in his paintings. Bringing to life the artist’s passion for mathematics, his “robot” uses XY-plotter and web applications and, following the algorithm for lines based on the least squares approximation, puts onto canvas Koyama’s interpretations of mechanical systems while the artist’s hand creates images of the human body.

　Frantic Gallery is honored to present the first four paintings from Koyama’s new series of works titled Parity Violation, along with the prints and preliminary sketches that form the basis of his research. The Reverse Rotation, the exhibition that we are opening on August 28 in the Midori.so gallery space in Commune 2^nd in Omotesando, is ultimately a show about choice. The Reverse Rotation is about the things we do perceived as the choices we make, about mechanisms of cause and effect, about our current condition as the outcome of previous actions, and about the possibility of changing our future state by changing the actions we take in the present. Koyama’s way of arriving at this is science; the way he illustrates it to us is art.

Man at Work

Machine at Work

Parity transformation in physics is an important property in descriptions of physical systems. In most cases, it relates to the symmetry of a function. A parity transformation replaces a system with a type of mirror image. Stated mathematically, the spatial coordinates describing the system are inverted through the point of the origin; that is, the coordinates x, y, and z are replaced with −x, −y, and −z. In general, if a system is identical to the original system after a parity transformation, the system is said to have even parity.

　Koyama is interested in what happens when this reflection fails and there is a difference between the world and its reflection. Then, one of two possibilities must be chosen: the seeds in a sunflower are distributed in one direction (but could be arranged in the opposite one), an electron moves in one direction (but could move in the opposite one), the hair on the top of your head grows in one direction (but could grow in the opposite one). Koyama calls this “parity violation”. In the first case, two worlds, the one and the mirror reflection of it, are both possible and are balanced. In the second case, this balance is disturbed and only the chosen world becomes the real one. Koyama tries to capture this moment when the choice is made and one of many theoretical versions of reality comes into being.

Atsushi Koyama, Parity Violation 2, oil on canvas, 90x130x3cm, 2018

　In Parity Violation 2, for example, Koyama works with the structure of the jet engine, a situation where the choice has already been made: in theory, the engine turbine can rotate in both directions, but here the direction was chosen (by the man in the middle of the canvas) and the turbine is rotating clockwise. The artist is drawn to the particular structure of the jet engine, which sharpens the relationship between cause and effect — they continuously alternate in the wake of its choice. As it rotates, the centrifugal compressor impeller (seen around the neck of the human figure) compresses air and delivers it to the combustion chamber, where it mixes with the fuel. Continuing his long lasting MANMACHINE project, Koyama replaces the fuel with the open palms of the man, which serve as the source of energy for all of the machine’s work. As it comes in touch with the air, this new “fuel” combusts, creating energy that goes on to rotate the high pressure turbine (seen at the figure’s chest level). This turbine is connected with the centrifugal compressor impeller, which delivers and circulates air. The energy then rotates the low pressure turbine, which in turn is connected to the impeller and the high pressure turbine, and so rotates the whole machine. In this way the system is closed and balanced. No part of it will stop as long as the fuel is being delivered. The turbine rotates the impeller, the impeller delivers air and creates the combustion of the fuel, which rotates the turbine, which rotates the impeller, which rotates… What is the cause and what is the effect here? The rotation of the turbine is the effect of the rotation of the impeller, but it is at the same time (and in this case, obviously) the cause of the rotation of the impeller and the whole mechanism. The painting illustrates the immediate turning of cause into result; the “wheel” shows the closed cycle of act and outcome.

　The turbine moves one way — permanently moving the sequence of effects/causes in this direction — due to the choice made by the man in the center. The question, then (and this is crucial for Koyama’s work) is how we can stop this chain of events — and how it would be possible to launch the reverse rotation.

Events

Lecture 1
“Jet Engines and Dharma Wheels: On the Mechanisms of Karma”
Rodion TR
Sat., August 31, 13:00 – 15:00 (in Japanese)

“Mind precedes all the phenomena,
mind matters most, everything is mind-made.
If with an impure mind
you speak or act,
then suffering follows you
as the cart wheel follows the foot of the draft animal.
If with a pure mind
you speak or act,
then happiness follows you as a shadow that never departs.”
Buddha, The Dhammapada

　Sometimes we put in all the effort possible, do everything we think we can, and things just get worse. Sometimes we don’t lift a finger and things happen in a way we didn't even dream about. Why? Wouldn’t it be a mystification to keep saying it was just a coincidence? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to try to find the rule in this course of events? Where is the mechanism that governs it and how does it work?

　The wheel is one of the oldest symbols in all of Indian history. In Buddhism, it is used to represent the universal moral order, Buddha’s teaching, the path to enlightenment, or even Gautama himself. It is said that Buddha has set the wheel of Dharma in motion, which signifies revolutionary change with universal consequences. The cyclical movement of the wheel is also used to symbolise the cyclical nature of life in the world. This wheel of suffering can be reversed or “turned” through practise. It manifests the sequence of cause and effect: everything is a cause to what is to come and a result of a previous action. And it is our actions that decide what direction the wheel of our life turns.

　Atsushi Koyama explores very similar laws through science and represents it in his paintings. Parity transformation in physics relates to the symmetry of a function. Simply put, it is the ability of x to turn into -x or left to turn into right. Koyama, however, explores the phenomenon of the collapse of parity, when one value or one direction is chosen. He is interested in cases where things are already fixed and the choice has already been made: one thing and not the other is being made a reality. His main symbol is now the engine, the gear, the wheel.

　Koyama’s Reverse Rotation exhibition gives us an opportunity to bring jet engines and Dharma wheels together. In this lecture, we will reflect on mechanisms, both concrete and universal; think about choice, the subject of choice, and cause and effect; and, of course, enjoy the enigmatic aesthetics of the “mechanistic” vision of the world in Buddhism, along with the spiritual connotations of scientific artifacts as depicted in Koyama’s art.

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Lecture 2
“Koyama-san, what do you underline in your science books?”
Atsushi Koyama
Sun., September 1, 13:00 – 15:00 (in Japanese)

　What an impressive studio you have, Koyama-san. Electric boards, canvases, cords, oils… All the walls are covered with sketches and images. What do we have here? A drawing of a uterus by Da Vinci, a close up of an insect, erotic photos, blueprints of combustion engines, clippings from a human anatomy atlas, ornamental patterns. Marvelous. And the library, of course—let me see what you are reading. The Mathematical Experience by P. J. Davis and R. Hersh (first published in 1981): “the psychology of mathematicians; what a proof really means, in relation to actual truth; the mathematics of number mysticism, hermetic geometry, astrology and religion”. You are not joking, Koyama-san, right? The Universe of Body: East and West, by Yasuo Yuasa (岩波人文書, 1982): “In the mode of thinking which is beyond the historical diversity of civilization, there is a point of view on micro- and macro-cosmos of human body and the position of the human in universe”. I see. And here? Is God a Mathematician? Mario Livio (Simon and Schuster, 2009): “Is mathematics ultimately invented or discovered? If, as Einstein insisted, mathematics is ‘a product of human thought that is independent of experience’, how can it so accurately describe and even predict the world around us?” One more. The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution by P. D. Ouspenskiy (first published in 1945): “Ouspensky sees man as a machine and propose to study man from the point of view of what he/she may become”. Ok, Koyama-san, what are you doing here, in this studio? Seriously. Through art and mathematics, across the micro- and macro-cosmos — I mean, what are you searching for?

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Frantic Gallery

Tokyo, Japan
Minato, Minami-Aoyama 3-13
Commune 2nd Midori-so Gallery Space

1070 Belgium, Brussels
Anderlecht, Rue d'Aa 32 B

www.frantic.jp | jackin@gallery-neo.tokyo

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This exhibition is curated by

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