The sublime is in turn of different kinds. Its feeling is sometimes accompanied with a certain dread, or melancholy; in some cases merely with quiet wonder; and in still others with a beauty completely pervading a sublime plan. The first I shall call the terrifying sublime, the second the noble, and the third the splendid. Deep loneliness is sublime, but in a way that stirs terror.
Immanuel Kant 1
Koichi Yamamoto's large-scale monotype2 prints engage the notion of the sublime. One might suppose that such an engagement is now an anachronistic astonishment, or an anomaly, given the long course of discourses on the notion of the sublime, from Longinus to Kant to its postmodern permutations, and thus something entailing a displaced historicity. The sublime in Yamamoto's prints is neither an anachronistic astonishment, nor an anomaly, but rather is integral to the experience underlying the facture of the works.
The experiences underlying these works are experiences of nature. That is not to say that the relation of the works to the experiences of nature underlying the works, or to nature per se, is that of mimesis in a simplistic sense. For while mimesis is inherently a relational concept, it is already a complexly nuanced concept when it appears in Plato's dialogues.3 Such mimesis as obtains in the works does so instrumentally, which is to say that it does so with regard to the mediation entailed in the facture of the works, and to the viewer response elicited by the work.
Nature as engaged these works is an alterity. Nature, that which has being apart from human agency, is thus an alterity,4 the inclusive object of human subjectivity. Insofar as nature is an implacable otherness, indifferent to and not contingent on the human agency which engages it, it is an ultimate alterity. That indifference, that absolute Otherness, may also obtain within the aspect of quantity, so that "We call sublime what is absolutely large," as as Kant urges in the third Critique.5 Something of that absolute largeness is manifest in the prints; one has the sense of vastness of landscape space, and of feeling oneself small within that space.
Nature is engaged as an alterity, but the representation of nature is not that of memesis in a simplistic sense; its representation is mediated by the means of facture. This mediation entails several aspects: there is the obvious diminution of size-though the scale of the prints is large, and the achromatic character of the prints and their stong value contrast. There is also most saliently the marks particular to the process: brayer and roller traces, including the line formed by use of the edge of the brayer and roller, the use of tarlatan and inflated condoms (stronger than balloons) to wipe and daub into the rolled-out ink. This range of marks constitutes the syntax of these prints, inflected by individual touche and écriture.6 It does not provide, however, an exhaustive account of their powerful affect.
Koichi Yamamoto is Professor of Printmaking at the University of Delaware. He received the Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, Oregon, and following post-baccalaureate study at the Bratislava Academy of Art, Slovak Republic, and the Poznan Academy of Art, Poland, earned the Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Yamamoto's recent one-person exhibitions include: University of Delaware Fine Art Gallery, Newark, Delaware; Art Access Gallery, Salt Lake City, Utah; Autzen Gallery Portland State University, Portland, Oregon; Department of Visual Arts, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City, Utah; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, Utah; Illinois State University Gallery, Normal, Illinois; FAB Gallery, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta Canada; O Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Quartersaw Gallery, Portland, Oregon; Szynkiewicz Museum, Poznan, Poland; Galleria Miejska w Mosine, Poznan, Poland; 1993 Galleria Sytuacji, Krakow, Poland. Yamamoto's group exhibitions include the 7th Bharat Bhavan International Biennial Print Art, New Delhi, India; Ljubljana International Print Exhibition, Slovania; Cultural Evolution & Diffusion Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph Missouri; 2006 Hilo National Invitational Exhibition, University of Hawaii at Hilo; 2006 The University of Dallas National Print Invitational, Haggerty Gallery, Irving, Texas; On the Edge/ IMPACT-KONTAKT, Universitat der Kunste, Berlin, Germany; Verdenskunst, Kunstsalen Fredericia, Denmark; 2nd Tama International Print Exhibition Canada-Japan, Tama, Japan; Line of Site: University of Alberta 25 years of Printmaking, traveling to Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan, and Royal College of Art, London, UK. [An afternote: at the time of this exhibition, Koichi Yamamoto was at the University of Delaware; he joins the printmaking faculty at the University of Tennessee Fall 2007.]