stir/dry gin (2024) Collages by Hamu Isen

I am an artist who works with signs as my material. Motifs such as soles of the feet, shoe shapes, ribbons, and language appear repeatedly in my work, functioning as "signs" embedded within layers of personal memory and cultural sediment. Among them, footprints hold a particularly significant position—not merely as bodily traces, but as signs that embody actions, time, and meaning. They carry information such as “who,” “how,” and “in which direction” someone existed, serving as symbols that evoke culture, memory, and narrative. I treat them as sign-based points of contact that visualize the invisible.

My interest lies in the process through which signs become present via bodily acts, connect with materiality, and are restructured as meaning. For example, the act of writing letters with the trace of a foot reconstructs abstract language into something material and improvised—a “point of contact” where meaning blurs and begins to sprout anew. In works like the shoe shaped sculpture and parts of the Hidden Gesture series, I often use grid paper to plan forms prior to production, basing compositions on balanced ratios such as 5×7 (silver ratio) and 5×8 (golden ratio). Rather than relying solely on physical gestures, I aim for a coexistence of chance and structure by grounding my work in invisible orders.

For me, signs are not static entities but living structures within movement and relationships. Motifs such as shoe shapes or ribbons are not mere symbols; they function as devices that mediate between body and society, self and collective, past and future. My practice is a conceptual endeavor that explores the in-between of visible and invisible, thought and sensation, chaos and order through signs. Rather than reconciling opposing forces such as East and West, my work dwells within their tension.

The forms that appear in my work are never ends in themselves—they are always temporary borrowings used to mediate the questions that arise within me. Figurative and abstract, painting and sculpture, bodily traces and symbolic ribbons—all are chosen for their mediating potential and eventually recede. I create at the intersection of intuition and concept. My selection of forms and gestures is neither dictated solely by intellect, nor overwhelmed by sensation. Rather, I aim to remain within a state of "mediation" in all such acts.

• Nationality: JAPAN
• Date of birth : 1982
• Artistic domains: Works by professional artists,
• Groups: Professional Artist Contemporary Japanese Artists