WORKS

Japan has a long tradition of shoga, in which painting and writing coexist and resonate within a single picture.

One masterpiece is the Edo-period Scroll of Poems by Thirty-Six Poets with Cranes, with calligraphy by Honami Koetsu and painting by Tawaraya Sotatsu. Following the flowing brush-written characters with the eye, their movement overlaps with the cranes taking flight, bringing the entire picture to life. This traditional Japanese integration of writing and image has also influenced the manga culture for which Japan is renowned. Sisyu focuses on the visual effects created when characters harmonize as part of a painting, and on the power of the words they embody. Her calligraphy, placed in dialogue with the image, conveys meaning while weaving a new narrative through the beauty of Japanese written forms. Characters become part of the painting, and the painting begins to speak.

There are no outlines in nature. Yet Japanese art has captured people and natural forms through brush lines shared with calligraphy, one of its oldest cultural traditions. Where Western painting builds images with planes, Japanese art has depicted forms by drawing lines. The distinctive black contours surrounding faces and figures in ukiyo-e are an emblem of this approach. Sisyu reinterprets this beauty of line, which also influenced Western artists such as Picasso and Van Gogh. She frees ukiyo-e, which once translated three-dimensional space into flat lines, from the plane. Removing all outlines from the print, she replaces them with new ink strokes that become the contours of three-dimensional sculptures, moving freely through the air. From one particular viewpoint, the painting and sculptural contours overlap to reveal a single ukiyo-e image. From another angle, line and color shift apart, evoking the misregistration of a woodblock print. As viewers move, the work moves between two and three dimensions and the effect of shifted printing. Just as ukiyo-e once translated three dimensions into two, Sisyu releases its outlines back into the three-dimensional world.

This series reconstructs the sculptural beauty of timeless classic cars through the ink traces of a calligrapher. Incorporating the gold-ground techniques of the Renaissance, Sisyu builds layer upon layer to express both the substantial presence of these cars and their speed as they cut through the wind. Brushwork that moves freely between restraint and momentum breathes new life into elegant Western forms, creating a vitality that seems ready to drive out of the picture. The beauty of an inanimate machine meets the organic life of calligraphy.