Tetsuya Ishida

Often times with surrealist works, the public leads themselves astray, trying to make sense of the universe that would allow images to come together in such a fashion.  The specificity of that image then obscures the commentary, merely because the image itself has jarred the viewer; so much so, that the metaphor is often lost.  The tendency to focus on the imagery itself is most common in surrealism, because surrealism explicitly dictates that the content supercede things like gravity, scope, and biology, immediately throwing the viewer into “figure this out” mode.  In reality, the issue is the status quo, and highlights the interaction by which the viewer expects an image in the way you might try to calculate a mathematical equation.  Ishida wasn’t ever concerned with the possibility of humans becoming architecture; he’s indicting the status quo, in this case, that of Japanese society.  His work is pregnant with “does not equal,” inciting a visceral reaction, and hopefully inspiring people to stretch culture so as to include more in the middle. Tetsuya Ishida was “accidentally killed by a train” in 2005, but his timeless work lives on…

There’s no official site to speak of, but a Facebook Page has been created – HERE.