Cymbalist−Back Mirror Band

Kimura first aspired to become a painter, but, making use of his self-taught language skills, he began working at the event planning department at the American Culture Center in Tokyo. He turned his eyes to scrap materials and combined them into sculptures. Combining the words scrap and sculpture, he called these works “scraptures.” He developed a unique world by adding verbal play to the plastic arts.

Cleverly using a scrap iron sheet, Kimura created the shape of a cymbalist clashing cymbals and attached rearview mirrors from a car to it. At the time he produced this work, The Glenn Miller Story, a film featuring the life of the man famous as a trombonist, was a hit. That is why the subtitle of this work is Back Mirror Band, a pun on the Glenn Miller Band. The witty naming is typical of Kimura and it is amazing how the rearview mirrors look like cymbals.