Introduction

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  I’ve wanted to take up woodworks since I first had the idea of doing this gallery project. I was already buying and collecting furniture for my work. I was doing this at an extremely vague boundary line that can be seen simply as a hobby. I even planned to use my own ideas to produce original pure-material fixtures with furniture craftsmen. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by numerous woodworking jobs, all of which contribute to my work in various ways.
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• Whether it is something old or new, the fact that it is derived from wood material gives it a specific warmth and makes it dependable. Even something that is rotting to the point where it seems like it will break at any moment is endearing to me. In any case, me loving woodworks has been something that I have firmly grasped since the very beginning.
  
  When I first became aware of Mr. Urakami’s work, I got the feeling that my senses shifted somehow; something grabbed a hold of me. I try to keep it out of my thoughts, but it makes its way back into my head after some time passes. Carefully done work with a fine and polished appearance. I felt that within in his work hid a thinly veiled, peculiar “idiosyncrasy“.
• At that time, I had no connection to Mr. Urakami whatsoever. But I wholeheartedly wanted to know the origin of that “idiosyncrasy”. So through a friend of mine, I ended up visiting Togatta where Mr. Urakami is based. I will speak about this in detail in a later interview, but that resulted in me being shaken by Yosuke Urakami and his thoughts, stance and craftsmanship. At the same time, I wanted to create an opportunity to produce a work that broke through his hidden “idiosyncrasy”. That thought actually overlapped with what he wanted to do, and that truth was apparent in every dialogue that we had together, so naturally we began discussing specifics for working toward an exhibition.
• Use-less, the theme of this exhibition, is a concept that I threw out there for the creators, and it serves as something that is trying to express the alluring “idiosyncrasies” that I felt from those creators’ work.
  
  “More than something that is widely accepted by the masses, something that is enthusiastically supported by a select few people.” If a work’s “idiosyncrasy” isn’t felt by the person viewing it, then it may appear to them as useless. However, for someone who can see that item’s use in their own way, it becomes useful. I believe that in the end, something with such a specific quirk will be loved obstinately.
• Mr. Urakami’s works contain not only woodworking, but also approaches such as profoundness expressed through Japanese lacquer as well as foil stamping. So how should the creator himself perceive the framework of the “use-less” concept, and will he display craftwork that gets through within that? This group of work serves as an answer for me, the one curating it, and really serves as a question to those who come face-to-face with the work. With that, a specific communication is displayed where the user discovers a function for the work, therefore making it complete.
  
             galerie_a director Nobuhiko Akiyoshi