The three sculpture series of Hedgehog, Hekate and BenneBird comprise a single group of works.

All of these works have two different parts, a black part and a part shaved down with a grindes.

The black part is generated when the metal, melted to fill up the mold to the top, rapidly cools upon contact with the air. This is the only part of the sculpture exposed to the outside when the work is first given shape, and it is external to the actual work.

After the work is molded, this place is left untouched. For this part marks the generative process of the work and becomes the memory of its own formation. Comprising a flat black area, this part has nothing to do with the taking on of form, but creates a horizontal boundary with respect to the vertical directionary of gravity.

I have named this place "nude."

Another place, the part shaved down with a grinder, determines the outward appearance of the sculpture and lends it form. This part is shaped on the inside of the mold, and then the surface which has touched the inside wall of the mold is completely shaved away with a grinder. The grinder is used to lend the work the air of a slim, notched, solid body. This is done so that the work will not give an impression of being a "massa."

I call this place "tongue."

The structure of the ""tongue" of Hedgehog, Hekate and Benne Bird are as follows:

Hedgehog: integration as doubling
Hekate: devergence via three-pronged frok
Benne Bird: circle

Hedgehog forms a compound that integrates itself with Hekate and Benne Bird, and furthermore integrates Benne Bird and Hekate within itself.

There is an order to these compound fugures Benne Bird comes first and Hekate follows. Thus all of the compounds which contain a circle are Benne Bird.

These works conform to my intention of reproducing massa in the most primitive state possible. The exploration of the realm of these works began with a skepticism and distrust of massa.

Usually it is believed that the appearance and form of a homogeneous mass is determined by the contours shaped by the surface of that mass. However, before the massa is generated, there is a realm in which the factors that determine its form as a homogeneous solid already exist. This realm is comprised of the three factors of SIRIUS, Hekate and Benne Bird.

It is certainly cause for surprise that the non-mass homogeneity realized by these factors in fact turns into something which possesses the structure of a multi-faceted compound, simple yet having a certain kind of complexity to it.

It is possible to represent these factors as two-dimensional forms and turn them into elements. When Hekate and Benne Bird are turned into compounds, a three-dimensional relationship emerges between each of the elements. Of course, in the sense that the works possess their own material mass, they are realized three-dimensionally. However, these two circumstances do not lend three-dimensionality to the works.

"nude" endows the works with three-dimensionality.

As a boundary, "nude" points decisively to an earthly location. The "nude" body is a trace that marks the congealing of the metal within the realm of gravity which contains air, in contrast to the directionality of the form of the "tongue," the directionality of the surface of the "nude" body lends a fundamental three-dimensionality to the two-dimensional elements of the "tongue."

Furthermore, the "nude" body also demonstrates another important fact: that the work was generated as a single body all at once, and not as the assembly of separate parts. In other words, the "nude" body poits to the homogeneity of the work as its location.

The "nude" body has brought about great changes in the issues surrounding the autonomy of sculptural art. It separated the location of sculpture from its layout, gave independence to that location, and lent it prominence.

When we lay out these works on earth, it is impossible to bring them into agreement with their location without some kind of support mechanism. These works are an exploration of the possibilities of sculpture within "common space." In other words, they are an experiment with sculpture in the space of a gravity-free atmosphere.

The location of the sculpture is determined by the tension that arises between gravity and material and that which is not regulated by gravity and material, but makes them indispensable. On earth, gravity forms the common condition for location and layout, and the cosmic spatiality ordered by gravity has never been able to fully expose the location, which provides the impetus for the autonomy of sculpture.

Until now, issues of sculpture's spatiality have only been examined from the viewpoint of the cosmic spatiality possessed by layouts on earth. The location has been confused with the lauout, just as the spatiality of sculpture has been confused with that of architecture. Within a cosmos of gravity, sculpture has sought the illusion of having escaped the bounds of gravity from within layout. My works do not belong to this trend, but rather demonstrate a method for turning the escape from gravity into a reality.

Hedgehog, Hekate and Benne Bird form a relam of generation in which three kinds of structure are completed. The forms within this line of work possess only three elements.

Hedgehog bears the subtitle of "SIRIUS," and it displays an utterly simple divergence. It is the most primitive series, out of which Hekate and Benne Bird were generated.

The title of "Hedgehog" comes from a Grimm's fairy tale. It derives not only from the similarity to the animal's shape, but also from the guiding theme of the story "two Hedgehogs imposiible to tell apart."

The form generated when something simultaneously possessing two directionalities emerges from a single place. Not two separate parts spliced together, but rather two things emerging simultaneously from one. Or one thing generated as two. To make one thing in which two separate things are impossible to separate.

This is the structure of Hedgehog integration as doubling.

In terms of its form, it would be easy to confuse Hekate with the Hedgehog, but Hekate a form of simple separation, not something in which one thing has been doubled and two things have been integrated.

The reason for the name "Hekate" is that these works take the three-pronged fork as their basic element, and are composed from the layering of these froks. The resulting form taken by Artemis in hell. It is also the epiphany of the Hekate on Aktaion's head.

The "Benne" from "Benne Bird" is the name of an Egyptian immortal bird. There is also Ibis, the sacred bird of the god Thoth, and Pelargos of the Greek Kabeiroi. These birds, messengers of the gods, transmit secrets to humans.

The subtitle "Merkabah" is a Hebrew word meaning "vehicle of heaven."

All of the works in this series possess a circular form, but there are a number of types in terms of structure, and there are various levels in terms of theme.

In the works produced through 1981 (exhibited at Gallery Te and Nirenoki Gallery), the "nude" body serves as the starting point, and the Hekate has been integrated with the circular form of the Merkabah. Strictly speaking, Hekate and the Merkabah have therein been integrated by the SIRIUS, and in fact this integration is the structural theme. It is this very "integration" which hid the realm explored in the later Golem series, in which what emerges first comes to an end simultaneously to its own emergence, thus losing form.

The works after 1981 strengthen the circular form yet further, and there is no integration with the Hekate. This ring might also be called the socket for the single eye of the Cyclops or of Kaneyama-hiko. Both see themselves by replacing their lost eye with the binocular vision of humans.

The "Bird" is an omen, and the "Cyclops" is surely the minimum premonition for perceiving a transition of medium and discerning a cycle AION of time. Sculpture is already being led towards the heavens.

Hirotake Kurokawa