In a Kuwayama installation, the space becomes the object through this process of reversal. The materials are simply the vehicles to make a passage into the reality of a new kind of space, to bring space into being which is close to the practice of the great 15th-century Japanese landscape painter Sesshu. Installation at Chiba City Museum, Japan , 1996. Kuwayama likes to refer to this kind of space as absolute, as if there were no beginning or no end, as if the transference into time were an entry into the moment, and the moment would be absolute, unequivocal, unremitting in its perceptual sense of wholeness, its gestalt. There is a purity here that again recalls the unwavering commitment often attributed to Ad Reinhardt.
Purity means more than mere simplification.
And we are made to leap into this pure space, carrying our load of complexity, moving beyond the real world with the freedom of the imagination. Rather we see a world which appears beyond human perceptions, beyond settled and familiar meanings, a world which horrifies and thrills our spirit. We experience simultaneous terror and ecstasy transcending reality. 2 Installation at Chiba City Museum, Japan , 1996. Three corners with three colors, metallic pink, yellow, and blue on bakelite.