Hebel_121 is presenting works by the Japanese artist Atsuo Hukuda, hav‎ing known him and his work for more than ten years. For the first time his son Shuhei Fukuda is showing an installative work in the front space in a new approach to an old Japanese tradition called RYUHA.

RYUHA is a school of art in which stylised and structured skills, techniques, traditions are inherited collectively. Normally this happens by bloodlines of the patriarch or through the students of the school – just as it does for Ikebana, tea ceremony, martial arts, among others. Such aspects also seem to reflect the Japanese people’s instinctive personality and talent, as well as the rather organic development of Japanese art itself. These were once explained as ‚awaiting new things coming from beyond‘.

Atsuo Hukuda *1958 is a sculptor who has been employing traditional Japanese painting techniques and materials such as gold leaf, silver leaf and/or Japanese Urushi lacquer. The minimal body of work, visualised strictly according to Hukuda’s concept ‚Dry/Light/Clear/Sharp‘, consciously appeared along the lines of Rin-pa (another former school of painting). Hukuda, in addition, is also known as an active curator for over 35 years, notably through his achievements at CONCEPT SPACE.

Shuhei Fukuda *1997 on the other hand is an art student and a son of Hukuda. He is currently studying traditional Japanese painting, and exploring his own approach to the world by using traditional techniques and materials such as silver leaf. The relationship between the two artists – they coincidentally picked the same materials to work with, and are father and son – is certainly one of the forms of inheritance of tradition or skill.

Extrait of text by Naoko Mabon, Independent Curator