Language
Breaking Through
Kakinuma Koji - Writing with Body, Energy Spreading to Space
This overwhelming 10-meter wall work "Breaking Through" by leading Japanese contemporary calligrapher Kakinuma Koji shows large ink marks and torn masking tape.
Learning tradition from his calligrapher father, Kakinuma expanded writing beyond mere act to expression of body and emotion. To him, calligraphy is performance and visual language drawn with body.
Left side shows large brush trajectories, right side has Japanese characters violently scattered. Characters repeat while getting smudged, sometimes deconstructed into unrecognizable forms.
Notable is masking tape playing important roles cutting character structure and interrupting flow. He tears tape, attaches it to paper, then applies ink over it—physical acts becoming part of sculpture itself.
Kakinuma uses "trance work"—writing same characters hundreds of times to reach immersion. Characters become not reading objects but felt rhythms, visible emotions.
Through writing acts, he concentrates on "now, here"—unrepeatable moments where body, mind, and emotion fuse. This explores sculptural possibilities beyond characters, transforming calligraphy from fixed traces to spatial structure with temporal layers.
Learning tradition from his calligrapher father, Kakinuma expanded writing beyond mere act to expression of body and emotion. To him, calligraphy is performance and visual language drawn with body.
Left side shows large brush trajectories, right side has Japanese characters violently scattered. Characters repeat while getting smudged, sometimes deconstructed into unrecognizable forms.
Notable is masking tape playing important roles cutting character structure and interrupting flow. He tears tape, attaches it to paper, then applies ink over it—physical acts becoming part of sculpture itself.
Kakinuma uses "trance work"—writing same characters hundreds of times to reach immersion. Characters become not reading objects but felt rhythms, visible emotions.
Through writing acts, he concentrates on "now, here"—unrepeatable moments where body, mind, and emotion fuse. This explores sculptural possibilities beyond characters, transforming calligraphy from fixed traces to spatial structure with temporal layers.