Motoi Yamamoto

Motoi Yamamoto makes salt labyrinths that make me cry. He had an exhibit in Charlotte last spring, and his work so so beautiful and so temporary. Just like life.

The salt looks like lace or sometimes like galaxies. It's very fragile. The piece I saw had a fingerprint right on the edge from someone who had touched it, which somehow made the whole thing more wonderful -- it really is that permeable. It really can be destroyed in a flash -- throw a bucket of water at it, and it's gone forever.

But that's the best part, isn't it? And he does destroy his own work systematically. He creates it with salt (a symbol of purification and mourning in his culture, he started making art like this after his sister died), and when it's time to take it down, he gives people the salt and has them return it to the sea.

His work makes me think of space and galaxies and endlessness and infinity, and on the other hand, it makes me think of emptiness and impermanence. It's both inspiring and sad, but I think I love his work so much because it makes me feel okay about sometimes feeling sad. Nothing is here to stay, yes, but in the present, what is here can be so beautiful.

I've teared up looking at art before. I actually do that quite a lot, but seeing his work was the first time I really started crying. It was just me and Robert and a guard (keep those fingerprints out!), and I started crying and couldn't stop. I had to leave the room to compose myself. Robert is a more logical person than me, much less emotional. He likes art, but it doesn't affect him the way it affects me. What's nice is he loves me because I'm so affected. He didn't understand it, but he didn't think it was stupid either.

Anyway, art is the best. That is all.