Reflections - Water Sculpture Project

In 2008 Kentaro Fujioka started Water Sculpture Project, a street installation project in which the artist creates the sculpture of water puddles at different locations in New York City. The reflection of buildings and sky on the surface of the water offers another possibility to the perception of daily life, bringing the artist's fascination with light and color to the New York street. In 2009 the project took place at several locations in Tokyo.

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Artist Statement

I work in traditional art forms such as charcoal and graphite drawing, painting on canvas, and sculpture, but I use these mediums in non-traditional ways. What is almost immediately apparent about my work is how much it values spontaneity and embraces surprise by striking a balance between accident and control. Randomness and chance are integral to the success of my work, but only because I first determine the parameters within which the unexpected can take place. 

I intentionally introduce natural phenomena in my art-making process to challenge my ability to control the situation.  Instead of working against time, gravity, inertia, friction, viscosity, and so on, I embrace these elements and incorporate them into my process and works.

I believe in the strength of the dialectic method, for example, art and nature, construction and destruction.  I always work on two opposite things at once. In some cases I try to push the contradiction further. My bicycle is a practical tool for transportation, but I also use it as a drawing tool. Riding it across large sheets of paper, I treat surface as texture and at the same time as representative image. In my water sculpture, you see the reflected image on the surface of water although you are actually looking at the surface I created.
In my latest paintings I try to glue two pieces together, creating as strong a bond as possible, knowing that they will be ripped apart later.

This sense of dichotomy exists in my work, Reflections, Water Sculpture Project. Seeing the street lamps and buildings of New York City reflected in rain puddles made me aware of how the pace of modern life causes us to overlook the remarkable in our surroundings. Water may seem the simplest of art materials, but I have found tremendous possibilities in its flexibility or fluidity and its reflective qualities. Experimenting with these properties, I seek a balance between the element of chance and my own meticulous preparations. The result is a certain tension above and beyond the beauty in the work.

In 2008 I installed Reflections, Water Sculpture Project at different locations in New York City. The following year, I took this portable medium to the streets of Tokyo, with repeated success. The sculptures are a series of continual discoveries in which an everyday visual phenomenon—the reflections that appear in pools of water—reveals a new dimension in the physical spaces all around us, and thereby engenders nothing less than a new appreciation for one’s environment.