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Moment of Transformation
Maruyama has built large cubic frames out of wooden posts in the G-Art gallery, and has covered the floor with sand. The bottom joints of the construction, where the posts touch the floor, are important to the whole. This is because the strange wooden forms around the joining parts transform the entire space in the gallery - much like the chestnut tree Roquentin saw in "La Nausee". Maruyama then sharpened the ends of many sticks that he had collected outside the gallery, and stuck them into the corners of the room. While developing his construction, he also went and hid sharp stimuli in the trees that line the Ginza streets and in trees in Ueno Park. There is no doubt that he intended the details to transform the whole.Why is he attached to the details? The performance I saw at Plan-B a year before his opening will make answer clear. With radios tuned to various 24-hour stations, Maruyama picked up and read newspaper articles aloud, while building a wall of newspapers between the audience and himself. He asked through his performance what kind of creative works are understandable in a highly technological society that changes everything into signs. To him, the details that one gleans form the informational network (that has been constructed around the world) is a starting point. He doesn't care if his work passes unnoticed. He has a grander plan in mind. For he is seeking a way to make minute phenomena - i.e. Sharpened pieces of wood-sway the entire network. And, as along as man's consciousness can change, Maruyama's work will aid that "moment of transformation. "
The third exhibit I saw of Maruyama's work concentrated even more on detail. He enlarged a picture of Yumenoshima (the island in Tokyo bay used as the city dump) to the extent that the spots of the photograph could be seen. These spots were painted on panels that were hung at regular intervals all over the gallery wall, and onto these panels were stuck objects that had found at Yumenoshima. By using recognizable objects with such an altered image, one's consciousness was stimulated enough to make what had been invisible detail visible. Maruyama said "Much the way cancer enters every cell of a living body, so should this work invade all of one's mind." Given that there are other reviews of this work, I know that I am not the first person to be affected.
(Kinta TANO - critic)
From "Bijutsu Techo", February '85 issue
