650 watts and 60 watts

Yoshida graduated from the Painting Department at Tama Art University in 1968. Based on the flexible method of thought he learnt from Yoshishige Saito, in the late 1960s, he presented one after another three-dimensional work employing the commonplace things and attracted considerable attention. In 1971, he took part in The 7th Biennale de Paris. From then on, he produced prints employing the phototype process and a series of paintings entitled Shoku(Touch), which were composed of traces of the hand.

Artists who employed commonplace things such as natural objects and industrial goods emerged in the late 1960s. Their works dismissed fixed ideas of things and contributed to revealing the vivid state of things. Yoshida is one of the artists representing this tendency. In this work, the presentation of the condition or circumstances surrounding the things is emphasized. A cord hung from the ceiling forks into two in midair. Both ends are connected to a light bulb, one left dangling in midair in accordance with gravity and the other coiled on the floor. It is designed to show the reality of the situation in which the electricity is flowing through the cord, to show the contrast of the two light bulbs differing in brightness, and to make the viewer aware of the entire space from ceiling to floor. A method like this, in which we are made conscious of the everyday world as it is using ordinary things, continues to be an important current in contemporary art to the present day.

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