” Transmigration of water inspires me with a sense of life. The process of water circulation from clouds to land, to the ocean, and then back to the clouds is the symbol of airiness, or “releasing from the gravity”, and is also the symbol of powerful life stream. As Ancient Greek philosopher Thales, for example, asserted water to be the principle of all things, I can feel the energy of life from water. When I was young, I could learn the meaning of life from Soichi Hakozaki (1928-1988), a prominent psychologist. And since then, I have been creating sculptures with the sense of “water transmigration”.

Now I seek to associate the sense of water with the Japanese aesthetic cultivated in the Muromachi and the Momoyama periods, and hope that those sensitivities will lead me to new ideas and fields of the contemporary sculpture. “

– Shigehito Matsuda