Sho Hasegawa

The lithography stones can be presented together with the lithographs as Suiseki. Suiseki, translated as “water stone”, is an art form practiced in East Asia. It involves presenting stones found in nature together with calligraphy or paintings in a particular way to enjoy their expressive shapes, colors and textures. Suiseki stones are always placed on a pedestal or presented on a plate and often combined with a display shelf. The most important rule here is that the stones must not be shaped by humans. Nevertheless, at the same time the dilemmatic question arises, where is actually the border between the purely natural deformation and the artificial deformation. In this context, I find slab limestone enormously interesting. The separating side is so flat that one could think it had been ground smooth by human hands.
With this unique perspective on appreciating stones, it reminded me of the 1970 World’s Fair held in Osaka. It was shortly after the aforementioned moon landing. At that time, one of the sensations was the presentation of a moonstone in an odd glass case.