QusokuzeShiki is an attempt to reconfigure themes such as authorship, structure, temporality, and ritual in art, based on the Buddhist concept of 空Ku 即Soku 是Ze 色Shiki (“Emptiness is Form”). The artistic value of the work lies in its structure, which formally and conceptually responds to several issues in contemporary art.
All members involved in the production of works by QusokuzeShiki remain anonymous, with teams fluidly assembled for each project.
This is a deliberate departure from the modernist, 20th-century view of art, which centers on “authorship.” As Roland Barthes argued in The Death of the Author (1967), the meaning of a text should be interpreted multidimensionally by the reader, and we transpose this structure onto the act of art-making itself.
This perspective that it is not the author but the “structure” that defines the work resonates with discourses following relational art. However, we relativize the context of Western rationality by incorporating an element of Asian religious philosophy, the invisible totality expressed by the concept of 空Ku (“emptiness”).
Furthermore, our works are often created through a fusion of traditional Japanese craft techniques and advanced technologies such as 3D scanning and digital modeling. The significance of this technical intersection lies not merely in the superficial value of “combining tradition and modernity” but in its ability to visualize the “material coexistence of different temporalities.” By juxtaposing techniques rooted in the past with those oriented toward the future within the same structural framework, the work presents time not as linear but as asynchronous and multilayered. This functions as a critique of the modernist art system’s underlying view of “historical progress.”
In terms of visual composition, we frequently incorporate elements such as asymmetry, inversion, and invisibility.
For example, the “Blood Pool” and “Yellow Dragon” sculpted on the underside of the board in Sengoku Battle Shogi – Kawanakajima are hidden from view and cannot be seen from the top. Yet they unmistakably exist as an unseen presence.
The “reversed vajra” motif found on the stands for the pieces draws on the concept of the sakabashira (“reversed pillar”) in Edo-period architecture, symbolizing the simultaneity of completion and collapse, and functions as an “unfinished structure” (that is, a “catalyst for permanence”).
These features serve both as an internal critique of the value system of modern design, which prioritizes rationality and visibility, and as a mechanism that questions the very framework of perception itself.
In this way, QusokuzeShiki’s creative practice is not merely about producing artworks but involves multiple interventions into the contexts of art history, systems of religious symbolism, the historical development of techniques, and epistemological structures. The form (色Shiki, “the tangible which equates to the work”) that emerges as visual art results from a distillation of the unseen emptiness (空Ku); that is, an accumulation of highly abstract layers such as relationships, systems, structures, time, and thought. It is not a permanent entity but a point formed through fluctuations of relationality. We regard this point as the artistic value within the structure we refer to as 空Ku 即Soku 是Ze 色Shiki: “Emptiness is Form.”