Manabu Hangai

     Hangai lives near a nature reserve on Hokkaido, the most northern island of Japan. His regular walks on the island not only inspire him, he also collects wood, bark and bamboo which he uses for his artworks. Hangai makes his own paper. He uses ‘hosojuzumo’, a seaweed species collected for him by a local fisherman. It is easy to work up. It needs to be washed, soften, boiled and finally to be grinded to give the pulp its cohesion. Hangai uses a basic form of twigs and hemp on which he applies the pulp. After being dried he colours the paper and ads acrylic as a finish.

About the works that are currently being produced

     I am creating pieces with "reproduction" as the theme. For a while now, I have been questioning about our tendency to throw away those items which are reclaimable as a resource.As a result, I've been using these items in my pieces, while trying to transform them from strictly negative images (as garbage) and into something that is beautiful - not only in an artistic sense.

Why are you making these current works?

     I felt it was such a waste to throw away resources that wa could use again ! So, I decided to express this in my works. This was further bolstered in the year 2000 when I participated in an exhibition at Rias Ark Museum to recycle discarded seaweed into paper. (*There was severely damaged by the tsunami in Japan in 2011. Re-opened in 2013.)

Next project

     The reality is that although my list of upcoming project is extremely long, my daily assignment is to polish my 'mental lens' in order to more accurately focus my works on the theme of "reproduction".