Kishio Suga

For Kishio Suga, a major Japanese artist of the Mono-Ha movement (literally, the school of things), man can reach a heightened awareness of his environment through simple gestures that transform the space into a place conducive to meditation. From this perspective, Suga has installed a “stone garden” in the centre of the Centre Pompidou-Metz Forum, a radical version of a mineral garden, in the tradition of the zen gardens of Japanese temples. The intention of the artist is to return our relationship with nature to the centre of our focus. He describes his method as follows: “I used metal tubes, rocks and stones, the stones being the only natural elements of this work. Man is dominant and has control over the artificial materials, but not over the natural elements. So, to decide whether a natural element will be chosen or not, I must concentrate on my consciousness”. The visitor is invited to look carefully at these stones, to appreciate their power and complementarity. They keep the strings taut and thus guarantee the balance of the whole. Each string follows a different trajectory, creating a kind of live magnetic field, which Suga calls “inner density”.