MARJORIE &FELLOW STAFF FONG CHAO WHO TOOK ALL THESE PICTURES. GREAT GUYS

PAINTER & WRITER FERNANDA DIAS (BACK TO CAMERA), MARTA NISHIMURA AND BRILLIANT JOURNALIST, WRITER AND ANTHROPOLOGIST, CARLOS MORAIS JOSÉ.

I am very much in favour that art has to be apprehended as part of culture in the sense that if in a rather recent past, culture was characterized also as an expression of race, ethnicity, and very nationalizing, and it was stable, unchangeable and of anchored roots, authoritative, authentic and unquestioned, the globalisation of communications and information has definitely changed it into a very complex notion, compromised and arguable, mixed, unequal and even ambiguous, contextual and changing, invented, fragmented and constructed. In such a way that all means of expression are legitimate, provided they bear an intrinsic quality and an innovative path.
Such is the case of the works of Marta Nishimura. Her present exhibition presents two genders. The first one is characterized by the use of plaster and porcelain, with the incorporation of silk screened images. Due to the conflictual features of combining rigid plaster and a more manipulative clay, these works are mainly evocative of an architectural construction.

In all aspects of these pieces, there is a predominant geometry that is transgressed in the details. It is this transgression that provides further livelihood to the overall composition of elements that are possibly constructed from an imaginary floor plan or an elevation. There Marta inserts graphic silk screened elements such as the gold fish applied on a carved surface, signs of a very distinct vocabulary.

This is a very good example of the plaster series, in which, though the artist has lived in Kyoto for the past 10 years, she still retains and expresses her native Portuguese-European culture through the calligraphic annotations of an invented writing very well viewable in this detail, with other experiences that were incorporated in her life.
Her more architectural pieces are often surprising for the removable elements that are part of the items, as if they were some kind of game to be offered for the public to reconstruct the piece. Therefore we are also witnessing a great amount of generosity in this invitation for the manipulation of a work of art whose sole purpose is to express its intrinsic and extrinsic beauty.

The plaster surface not only provides for the already mentioned architectural structure, a fluidity apparently entrapped into a set of rigid shapes that confer to this series an almost monumental approach. However if we travel through the surfaces we are constantly discovering new accidents in the plaster's surface, almost like the transposition to plaster of the conscience of the calligraphic qualities of Chinese or Japanese calligraphy with all the beauty of the brush stroke and  inaccessibility of meaning to the Westerner, as well as, in this case, the Easterner.

The other set of objects on display, they do carry an utilitarian shape which is often totally subverted. This vessel has a life of its own if we view if vertically, horizontally or up-side down.

Though inspired now by Japanese ceramics, Marta Nishimura uses the traditional cobalt blue from her native Portugal decorative tiles and operates a deconstruction of the traditional shape of a cylindrical vessel into a sculptural approach, rendering the vessel into a textured and manipulated canvas where she has so knowledgeably applied her own calligraphic painting elements. By viewing the same area of the vessel in its right position, in a horizontal and then in a reversed position one is led to view the innumerable surprises that the eye discovers over the geography of this piece.

This vessel, although based in an utilitarian plate shape, has been subverted into something that has lost its utilitarian quality through the concept of the artist herself.

Marta Nishimura has sculpted the plate while in its clay shape into something else with the pretext of a plate shape.

It is very apparent and viewable the way she displayed the clay at the end of the plate. For me it bears a resemblance to a [now] calligraphic representation of the freedom of an errant Japanese brush. However she has created layers, breaking the continuity of that flow, because she is not a calligrapher but a ceramist and, naturally, a potter.

The second picture is an increased detail and highlight of this part of the piece.

To all this I am led to state that art is a permanent evolution, a permanent quest of the human mind, a combination of influences that provide, no matter what is the mean chosen, a great journey into the realm of the mind-spirit.

I am so very impressed by my dear friend Marta Nishimura's work and its contemporary and uniqueness that I cannot but share her superb work.

António Conceição Júnior