Ryu Enchi

Profile

"I searched Japan and China for beautiful rock gardens. When I found them, I would sketch their parking lots." - Ryu Enchi

Enchi's paintings, drawings and sculpture often playfully deal with aesthetic theory and Zen Buddhist concepts of space. He is best known for his 'contemporary ink paintings', which make use of receipts, parking lots and other objects from daily life. Citing how ink painting constantly evolved in pre-modern Japan, Enchi vocally opposes the way traditional arts such as calligraphy and tea ceremony have become standardized and 'reactionary'.

Artist Quotes

"On weekends, people flock to Ryoanji and the temple gardens of Kyoto to marvel at their 'perfect' aesthetic forms. But these forms are everywhere. If one really understands these gardens as Zen 'mindscapes' they should also be able to appreciate the patterns of oil stains on asphalt, socks and underwear strewn across the living room floor and the garden of plates and utensils that results from a hearty meal."

"In college, I worked nights cleaning up the meat department at a supermarket. Pressure spraying all the bloody beef and pork scraps into a pile on the tile floor, I would try to alternate layers of fat and muscle to make a circular red and white meat target in the center of the room. It's funny that I didn't even know who Jasper Johns was at the time."

´Ryu's Black Ink´ by Seth High for ArtMuse

"People often mention that Kyoto is an ancient city of 2,000 temples and shrines and the true 'cultural heart' of Japan. However, few of these people will also tell you that Kyoto is host to 103,000 parking lots, 511,000 buildings and nearly a quarter-million kilometers of roadway. At the current pace, convenience stores will soon outnumber all temples and shrines by a scale of 5 to 1." - Ryu Enchi

Artist Ryu Enchi spent his formative years living in the Demachiyanagi area of Kyoto, where the gently flowing Kamo River abruptly splits in two. Unlike the millions of yearly visitors to the city, Enchi never intentionally sought out the historical and cultural treasures that dot his hometown - the ones that led to Kyoto being named a World Heritage Site in 1994. Like students anywhere, he attended local schools, took piano lessons, and played a variety of sports before going to technical college, where Enchi spent his days studying computer engineering and his nights working as a supermarket clerk.

Upon graduation from college, Enchi was recruited by a large IT firm that subsequently transferred him to Tokyo. It was here that he first became aware of the 'mythical' Kyoto. "Whenever I told people where I was from, they made comments about how 'Japanese' or 'traditional' I was, even though they knew next to nothing about me. I was suddenly considered be a kind of cultural representative."

It was through his first serious girlfriend, an assistant curator at the Hara Museum, that Enchi began to develop an interest in contemporary art. Attending an opening reception for a show by artist Lee U-Fan, he couldn't take his eyes off the simple abstract forms. "Within 10 minutes of seeing my first painting by Lee U-Fan, I decided that I was going to be an artist.", remembers Enshi. "However, though I didn't realize they were his until after the show, what really blew me away were U-Fan's rock sculptures."

Subsequently devoting himself to studying the abstract and minimalist art of the 60s and 70s, it was inevitable that Enchi would come in contact with the conceptualist works of Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Broodthaers and Robert Rauschenberg as well as more recent work by Art and Language, John Baldessari, Sigmar Polke and Hans Haacke, all artists who blend the conceptual and aesthetic.

"Ideas that had long been fermenting in my head were being rendered visible by artists around the world - and I had no idea it had been going on.", remembers Enchi. "It was empowering knowing that art could take almost any form - or even no form at all." It also helped that the Tokyo art world of the mid-90s was incredibly eclectic - Tatsuo Miyajima's glowing red numbers, Shinro Otake's mixed-media installations, Emiko Kasahara's sheep billboards and Hiroshi Sugimoto's enigmatic photographs of water and movie theatres all received much attention throughout Japan and to some extant internationally. Enchi recalls, "Unlike the early 2000s, when anime and manga-influenced work began to dominate the Japanese art scene, successful artists of the 90s were doing a little of everything - the social, the aesthetic, the technological and the extremely personal. There was no pressure to go in any single direction or adhere to any style or doctrine. Moreover, new museums and galleries seemed to opening up every other month. There were a lot of places to show."

Teaching himself to paint with oils, acrylics and traditional sumi ink, Enchi quickly developed a competent technique. "I wanted to paint well enough to get the idea across. Of course, I also didn't want to embarrass myself. Without any artistic reputation, I had to be a little careful."

After several bad relationships with women, legal problems stemming from the arrest of a friend, and a bout with pneumonia, Enchi found himself back in Kyoto, the city he knew best. "In a matter of months, I had visited over 50 temples and had really rediscovered my hometown. It was exhilarating, studying the history and seeing the devotion to a Buddhist philosophy that was highly moral, individualistic and aesthetic."

After taking classes on Buddhist architecture and the tea ceremony traditions began by Sen No Rikyu, Enchi decided to concentrate on garden design. "Garden designers of the Muromachi period created miniature representations of the world. They hoped viewers would look inward and connect with the nature around them. However, nowadays, they have become urban enclaves of nature that people merely escape to - not places for looking deeper into oneself. They are more material and less spiritual. They are tourist traps because history has validated Zen minimalism, and history is a huge tourist industry in Japan."

After spending several months photographing and sketching the famous rock gardens and Buddhist architecture of Kyoto, he began to understand that the appreciation of form did not necessitate a tranquil setting. Beautiful forms were not only subjective, but everywhere we chose to find them. This led to the second stage of the temple project. "I would pay 300 yen to enter the temple grounds and proceed directly to the bathroom, where I would photography mold on the windows. Or I would go to the parking lot, where the asphalt framed not only white lines, but scraps of paper and other trash islands."

Titling his works with only the name of the temple where the original shapes were found, viewers automatically assumed they were looking at representational images of gardens or forms stemming from intense Zen meditation. Enchi explains, "I am not trying to trick the viewers. If anything, I am trying to open their minds and take them to the heart of the original ideas that the gardens and temples are based on. I am showing them that they have the ability to see beyond the mere object."

While he still collects temple and garden imagery, Enchi's work has taken on much more broad subject matter the past decade. For his 2001 'Contemporary Ink Painting' show at Allied Arts in Washington State, the artist exhibited ink paintings done on receipts, napkins, envelopes and even paper cups from Starbucks. Recently, Enchi has worked on a series of long paper scrolls and calligraphic pieces that treats contemporary literature by the likes of Nicholson Baker and Annie Ernaux in the manner of ancient Buddhist sutras. Next month, as part of the 'New Asia' exhibition at Copenhagen's ARC 2, Enchi will paint an entire room using 200 year-old sumi ink.

Keld Petersen, curator of ARC 2, writes on the museum's website, "Though Enchi's work often deals with history, he is a resolutely contemporary artist. His treatment of tradition is both cynical and reverent. He believes value is both inherent and created. His work always references a duality. It seeks reconciliation - form and idea, artist and viewer, time and place, something both atmospheric and grounded."

Kyoto Temples (1992-1999)

Enchi undertook this portfolio of paintings, sketches and scrolls during frequent trips to his hometown of Kyoto in the 1990s. Each work was given the title of the temple where its imagery originated. These artworks, which may depict an ancient rock garden, a parking lot, or the wall of a temple gift shop, challenge viewer value assumptions and attempt to reconcile the Zen Buddhist notions of aesthetic experience within our modern world.
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Kama Sutra (2000)

These simple sumi ink paintings can simultaneously be viewed as minimalist works of geometric expressionism as well as representations of sexual acts. Based on the ancient Hindu texts of the Kama Sutra, each painting depicts a distinct coital position. Contrasting religious spirit, sexual desire and purified aesthetic form, this portfolio exemplifies the humor, conceptual provocation and visual dynamic that lies at the heart of Enchi's art practice.
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Contemporary Ink Paintings (1998-2002)

Through his well-known 'Contemporary Ink Paintings', Enchi criticized the stagnation of Japanese traditional art forms while creating a body of enigmatic and undeniably contemporary works. Using handmade 'sumi' ink, the artist painted receipts, paper bags, old t-shirts and other detritus collected from his everyday life. Mixing intentional strokes with Rorschach-like splashes, the pieces are half-way between representational illustration and pure abstraction. According to Enchi, "Sumi ink doesn't try to dominate a surface - there is always interaction. And with that interaction comes some nice surprises."

From 2000 to 2002, Enchi created his final series of Contemporary Ink Paintings. Titled 'Salarymen', these works depict typical Japanese professionals (which Enchi was for a short time) waiting for trains, working at offices and carrying heavy black briefcases.
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Sumi Ink on Receipts (1999-2001)

"Personally, I love Enchi's receipts. Their small scale and personal information, product and price details concerning whatever Enchi bought that day, makes them intimate and intriguing. They each have a story to tell. Moreover, they are formally beautiful, especially where the ink contrasts with colored type and the logos of businesses.", comments artist Jeff Pie.
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Large Works on Canvas and Rice Paper (1998-2009)

Originally inspired by Lee Ufan, Enchi often uses sumi ink to paint over gessoed canvases. Varying greatly in size, each work is designed for the specific place it will be hung. As a general rule, Enchi accepts no more than 6 commissions each year. These site-specific works refer to the temple screen paintings of the Muromachi Period in Japan, when Buddhist painters would often take up residence at a temple in order to carry out commissions.
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Rooms (2003-2010)

These temporary gallery and museum installations allow viewers to experience sumi ink on a larger scale. "I remember the first time I walked into a room painted entirely by Buson at Ginkakuji. Though I tried to admire the walls as a work of art, I instead became extremely contemplative and self-conscious in the manner that the painter probably intended. This was why temples had rooms full of ink painted screens.", recalls Enchi.

Pottery (1999-2004)

Using traditional techniques and materials, Enchi created a body of modern pottery in kutani-yaki and other styles during his travels around Japan. Each piece is hand painted and signed by the artist.

Tokyo Diary (1992)

Soon after abandoning computer programming for a career in art, Enchi began sketching the city around him using ink and pencil. Though rough and abstract, these drawings hint at Tokyo's overwhelming presence.
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Sumi Ink On Photographs (1996-1997)

During the winter of 1996-97, Enchi produced a small portfolio of ink-painted photographs in collaboration with Vincent Covington.
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