Takahiro Suzuki Press Clipping

The Financial Times, 16th June 2001

Title: 'Live!, Move!"
Subtitle: Kroller Muller exhibits fascinating art from Japan

(....) Since 1997 Takahiro Suzuki has been writing the word IKIRO everyday. The Japanese character IKIRO means "live, move". For Suzuki it is a way of meditation, and a guide of living. The endless repeating movement with ink on the chinese paper is a concentration on nothingness. It began in Wasington Sq. Park in New York in 1996. He also wrote the word in front of the holy mountain Kailash in Tibet, in a village in Tanzania , and in a former Post Office in Berlin.
Most touting is his installation in the room, next to the Sculpture garden of the Museum. In a perfect symmetrical order many tenth of clay tablets have been put in lines on the floor. On each of them lay ten sheets of paper with the character Ikiro, Ikiro, Ikiro. On the wall you can see a large photographs of Suzuki sitting under Budda tree in Sri-lanka. He says "For me it symbolises the return of everything into the earth."
Outside he built a desk of bricks, on which he is calligraphying his concept every day during the exhibition. For Suzuki who was a student of Ufan Lee, his way of expression or the appearance of his art is less important than the action of the making. By means of his permanent presence in the exhibition at the Museum , Suzuki is showing that also he himself is part of nature, part of a bigger whole.
The artworks at this exhibition are familiar to us, but at the same time not very well known.(....) Spirituality is the tangent plane, where East and West meet and are connected, a sponnality, that is revealed through a intuitive and emotional process.