Starting out from a realization that the constructs and structures upon which things are based usually remain hidden and what lies on top is always all that is visible to the observer, Aiko Tezuka undertakes to reveal concealed structures in time-consuming manual work – a process that the artist also sees metaphorically with respect to our understanding of the world. Thus, for example, Tezuka unravels and takes apart fabrics, revealing their material structures, transforming the opaque into something transparent.
Ghost – Suspended Organs presents several of the artist’s new, large-format works. For these works, Tezuka processed typical woven material found in the shops: thread by thread, she drew the weft or warp threads, or threads of a specific colour from the meter-long lengths of cloth until they formed a heap on the floor; in one of the works shown, she then created a new piece with the aid of those single threads on an embroidery frame stretched with transparent fabric. In turn, this fetched the innermost onto the outside: realized in embroidery, it shows abstracted organs and circulatory systems of the human body, malformed or deformed by illness.
The artist’s prime interest lies with the process of de- and reconstruction, and the breaking up of customary narrative structures in order to find a new way of contemplating the subjective essence of time and the processes of transformation that start out from it.