■　2020.3/5th　Artist statement

That day, Ι drove through a big rainbow on the highway.
Then I pulled back a silent white arrow of light, which leapt from my hands drawing seven rainbow colors on its way to the sky.
A rainbow, a bow, and an arrow.
Since there was a rainbow, I considered making an arrow.
The rainbow means hope in diversity.
I pray for a world that is proud of its many races, cultures, nationalities, religions and thoughts, and celebrates its differences.
And I placed an altar that I started creating in 2018 for the animist peoples.
I believe deities inhabit all the elements of Nature.
Don’t you think that it is an urgent sensibility in times like these?
7.7 billion humans are living in different national communities in only one planet in the middle of the vast universe.
Earthlings forgot humility and are now taking different chains of life and diversity from this planet and strangling themselves.
This arrow of light is also a spear directed to humankind.
If wrongly used, it can become a harmful weapon.
Why does humankind like making disgrafecul tools so much if art can make us free?
We could simply look up in the sky, see the rainbow, which is the same for all of us, and smile...
We are just too complicated.
How wonderful woud it be if many of those little arrows of light were shot, spreading a big rainbow of peace over the world, and we could smile to each other!
I wish that day will come soon!
Let's all stay cool.
October 27, 2020
Saboco Ono

■　Mar 2020　Route D’Argent Art Festival In Ikuno - Artist statement

Memory of aluminum that used to be under ground as minerals.
I want to call out all natural signs from that memory and make a light on the silver road in Ikuno town.

■ Dec 2019 Hikari sasu niwa - Artist statement

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone for visiting my Garden of Light in the busy days of this year.

“The material of aluminum is the source of light for me. Light is like life that falls upon us equally”
Is written on my business card.

Garden of Light
It is a secret place for prayer place where you can feel the light that is the source of life.
It may be our unconscious figure lurking deep inside our heart.

I now feel as if I have lost the place of prayer due to modern civilization.
I think that In the memory of DNA, which has different roots for each of us, the gods of the whole world,
which is the life itself consists of the yin and the yang of this world, there must be an aminist belief in our lives.
If we could trace our ancestors somewhere in the world!
And if we go back to the ancient times, it must have been part of the energy of the Earth in the universe.

I hit industrial aluminum plates and continue to engrave patterns on aluminum sheets.
The act of hitting and scratching in this way is probably a repetition of the primitive movements.
However, in the repetition of such meaningless movements, I feel the existence of ‘nothing’ beyond time and space while I am working.
And it feels like we are returning from inorganic industrial products to organic natural energy.

The most bauxite in the ground surface is aluminum rock.
Through the energy of my body, aluminum, which was a part of the earth,
becomes an arrow of light and reaches the Graden of Light which like the mirror that reflects this world.
I hope that light will lead to the opening of the new era in 2020,
and that the day when we will truly understand the meaning of peace will come to humanity.

■ Prayer and Alter 2019.9/3rd-15th Ronnie247 fine arts Tokyo Solo exhibition
2019.8/27th-9/29th Ronnie247 fine arts Tokyo Recommend Wall

Hitting and scraping aluminum is the primitive technique that I use every time I face a piece of art.
I can feel in the installation the presence of different energies originated from the ensemble of all the relics and vestiges of different peoples from around this planet.
Present, past, and future...
An arrow of light releasing a will that goes beyond time and space is born in my hands.
I create art as a form of prayer, with the mission of recovering the old memory of aluminum, hidden in the ground in the form of a mineral, and the shadow which lies in all the existing elements from a simple and inorganic industrial material.
I believe that we can find metaphysical memories in our inner unconsciousness.
Memories which are the cultural genes inherited from past generations.
And I believe that those memories are inspired by something and that they fill the whole space with magical power.

What is an altar?
Its meaning differs considerably in different periods and locations, and among different peoples, but for me an altar is a personal place for prayer linked to all the animistic gods.
We exist in the cosmic space of the planet Earth, but our bodies are small cosmoses in themselves too.

■　underground clouds - Concept note

Yes, it rides the stream of underground clouds,
And it flies
Pushing its way through our memories.
Oh, sound of the wind, echo far away,
Release, release the darkness and the light.
Oh, dark clouds, wrap everything,
Until the little birds pierce the universe
With beams of light hold in their beaks.

When I entered the basement of the gallery for the first time, my mind concentrated on the interior, so different to the place I was before. I found in it the daily memories of a distant land, the sun rising in the morning, vestiges of living and growing animals and plants. Then, the shadows and lights of the world when the sun sets, and the moon enlightens quietly the darkness. Later, the land shook and it turned into black rain, sinking to the bottom of the sea.

While daydreaming, I felt as if that momentary consciousness that all of us have was enough for the underground to recall us. I could not avoid the idea that we, humankind, are one cell of the Earth. It was the animism of the ethnic conscience that is in our distant memories and in those of the old civilizations. I could feel how that unconscious mind which is common to all forms of life in this planet had accumulated in the underground. And now I want all of you to feel that kind of metaphysical roots that grow in the subterranean universe.

■　Prayer and altar - Concept note

Aluminium is for me a source of light.
And light is similar to the life that is equally given to all of us.

I found this material by chance, in a natural way,
and I started creating letting myself be carried away by it.

I work using the traces and patterns that strangely emerge when I hit and scrape the material.
I think that the animistic prayers from the different ethnic minorities
that I have met traveling are somehow a part of the process too.

But what is a prayer?
I always pray to myself alone and in silence.
There are also times when I fight against my feelings.
But I think that God dwells within us. Actually, I have had several mystical experiences.
They don't have anything to do with religious enlightenment.
I consider them momentary presents that I get from the universe.

I often think that it would be great to build a mechanism to become one with the universe.
My installations are altars full of those prayers.
The meaning of the word altar may vary according to the period, the area and the people,
but for me an altar is a sacred personal space for prayer.
I think that we exist in this small cosmic space called planet Earth,
and that, at the same time, our bodies are that cosmos itself.

■　2room’s—HIKARI WO TUNAGU (Connecting the Light) 2kw Gallery

Following my previous exhibition themed ‘image no baton (The Baton of the Images)’ last April, this exhibition at 2kw Gallery is subtitled ‘HIKARI WO TUNAGU’ and I worked in larger size. I begin with introducing a part of a main concept from ‘image no baton’ as a reference for ‘HIKARI WO TUNAGU’:

I think that we are born with a core image as an unconscious common part like DNA. By creating some images, humans repeat chains of unconsciousness which might lead them become more conscious of the core of those images. (image no baton, 2kw Gallery, 2014)

I have been deeply attracted to something like animism for a long time. An animistic idea seems to be a necessary sensibility in the future. How do you think about that? I think the essential consciousness of the animism is highly important.

I wonder if the patterns I embossed on the aluminium represent our ancient memories. After viewing my artwork, many audiences mention various civilisations: Jyomon (Prehistoric Japan), Incan, Mayan, Celtic, Egyptian, etc. These are rather curious phenomena.

There is one thing I strongly believe having travelled many countries meeting various ethnic groups. Each civilisation and every tribe is totally connected over the mountains, across the oceans.

I feel all of us has an eternal time axis incorporated into our body as human history, and it has sustained our life a thousands years. Additionally, that memory becomes our human unconscious impression and with being inspired from my artwork, it would revive our memory.

That is a magical sparkling inspiration brought through my work. I would be very pleased if the light of ‘HIKARI WO TUNAGU’ works to sustain the eternal time axis we have in our DNA.

Saboco Ono

6 November, 2016

■　HIKARI  NI  SUMU  (Living in the Light) - Concept note

Gallery K, Tokyo February 2014

I have been making aluminium works with various techniques.
I emboss lines on aluminium plates and tapes with a needle;also patiently hammer the material to make embossment on the surface.
Since 2009, I have been making houses with holes.
I call them Hikaru House which means “Shining House”.
All over the surface, each Hikaru House has been embossed fully with patterns made with a needle, a stamp and a hammer. 

Space consists of the microcosm and the macrocosm; therefore human body is compared to the microcosm.

The interior and the exterior of the Hikaru House are directly connected,
as the microcosm and the macrocosm are the one, the obverse and the reverse come together as one structure.
Our houses also have windows, doors and ventilations,full of holes, meaning they are connected to the macrocosm.
Moreover, all our bodies have holes from ears, noses to skin.
It is interesting to say our bodies are connected to the macrocosm as well.

Each Hikaru House exists as a symbol of minimum unit of them.
Countless bumps and dents on the Hikaru House resonate with everything, reflect and shine.
The microcosm and the macrocosm occasionally enclose each other, having the sense of unification.
Human body itself is also a house which resonates and radiates everything as well as the Hikaru House, isn’t it?

When the Hikaru House is suspended,each sways and rotates with its own axis by little presence of someone;
showing attractive sparkles and movements.
It floats with its time axis as if each of them has life with it.
This is an experiential installation art.
Observers can enter the universe of the Hikaru House, and enjoy it by touching and looking.

■　Image No Baton (The Baton of the Images) - Concept note

2kw Gallery, Osaka April 2015

Since 2007, I have been working with aluminium in various ways.
While working on my artwork,I also made tin badges with industrial aluminium tapes;
I have made about 400 of them.
On each tiny aluminium circle 5 centimetres in diametre,
abstract yet described images have been born, then left for various people and destinations.

Like a part of my cell, those thousands of images have wandered around for years,continued to exist and never faded away.
Among the thousands, some have taken patterns,occasionally transformed and revived; even some have reborn as new images.

In this exhibition, I devotedly sought where those images came from and
that led me to work continuously in larger size.
The process itself was reuniting with old images I used to draw or
it was a first step to approach the source of images deriving from somewhere.

Actually, my trip around Nepal, Yunnan Province in China, South East Asia, Indonesia and Taiwan
meeting my favourite ethnic groups originally inspired me these countless images.

When working for this exhibition, I was deeply impressed by realising
that the tribes I met and “Sabo tribe” myself were connected and linked in the profound root. 

I think that human beings are connected unconsciously,
however, each tribe has handed on, nourished their images;and slowly transformed them along eternal time axis.

Besides, we are born with a core image as an unconscious common part like DNA.
By creating some images, humans repeat chains of unconsciousness which might lead them become more conscious of the core of those images.

It is like a work discovering a child who is lost and wandering in the sense.
It is also kind of a mystic work lighting up the images in unconsciousness,bringing each human seeing new self.

Through this exhibition, I would like you to feel the baton of the images embossed in bundles of aluminium’s own white light as well as unconsciousness of myself, a "Sabo tribe" and also of the human beings.

© SABOCO ONO All Rights Reserved.