TOYA Shigeo and MORI（森）

TOYA Shigeo was born in 1947 at Nagano.
His first exhibition was in 1974. Since 1984, he has released the "Forest" series, after that in 1994, the "From Boundary" series, and then around 2000, the "Minimal Baroque" series.

He has used the forest as a metaphor in his works.
In East Asia as a whole, Japan's territory is covered with forests.
Observing the structure of forests, they are composed of mountains and valleys. It has a lot of vertices and bottoms. 

He has wondered about what is our spirit living in a forest.
Human beings who live in a desert where there is no structure to hide have a direct face-to-face relationship (with people).
The lines of sight of both are facing each other directly.

On the other hand, the forest has an undulating hill structure.
In mountains and valleys, people are rarely required to face each other directly due to height differences and obstacles.
Their lines of sights are confusing.

Western lines of sight structure are based on vertical and horizontal.
In contrast, Japan has a diagonal lines of sight relationship.

His forest series is shaped by intertwined diagonal lines.
He brings the diagonal line from idea forest into his sculptures.