Ko Yamazaki, 2025
Ko Yamazaki was born in Japan but at 17 he went to Paris to study before finding his second home in Italy, working with marble.
Today Mike Axinn and I are back in Studio Pescarella, on the outskirts of Pietrasanta to chat with Ko Yamazaki. Originally from Kyoto, Japan, Ko has been coming to carve in Pietrasanta, Italy, since 1992. We find him working in the sunlight, polishing marble in his outside workspace under a hot tin roof. On his cavalletti are some rounded Yin and Yang forms which he is polishing.
Ko Yamazaki, yin and yang stones with drawings
Born the child of teachers, Ko’s mother was an activist and supported many causes. At the age of 10, he was surprised to find that the summer camp he was sent away on, was for communists. This encouraged him to reflect on the impact of politics from a very young age. Ko’s early life was moulded by a rich blend of activism, creativity, and a sense of independence; he often spent time with his grandmother while his parents worked.
Ko Yamazaki, Plates, white statuario marble, black granite base, 2017, 90 × 130 × 100cm
At 17, Ko left Japan for Paris and, although young, he was accepted at the Sorbonne to study art. Initially drawn to painting, he soon realized he didn’t enjoy the solitary nature of painting.
His father suggested he try Pietrasanta, a town renowned for its marble and artistic community. First Ko stayed with his father in his workspace, and took odd jobs helping out at the foundry and delivery jobs for the galleries.
Entrance to Studio Pescarella, Pietrasanta
Ko was captivated by the energy and possibilities of working with stone, and decided to stay. He describes his first attempts at sculpture, including carving his own hand in marble, an artwork that was stolen. Established artists, and artisans, helped him shape his learning, and develop his approach in conceptual art.
He works in wood while he is in Kyoto and stone when in Pietrasanta. He divides his working life between the two. He also sometimes creates in clay and plaster.
Ko Yamazaki, Wine Glass, white statuario marble, 1995, 90 × 60 × 60cm
An avid reader, Ko has always been influenced by his Japanese heritage of the creation of paper.
Ko Yamazaki, Toilet Rolls, white statuario marble
Ko tells how he came to carve a black cardboard box in marble. He was pondering on how people often have that final cardboard box after they’ve moved house, which sits in a room, unopened. He always wonders why the owner never just opens it and empties it out. Ko wanted to create this box in the heavy material of marble to reflect the emotional weight of unopened boxes, and likes the contrast displayed by carving a paper object in stone.
Ko Yamazaki, Cardboard Box, black Belgian marble, 2016, 25 × 40 × 25cm
Ko’s Japanese heritage inspired his fascination with transforming hard stone into forms that resemble delicate paper or books. He expresses a desire to preserve the tactile and cultural experience of reading and writing, which he feels is fading in the digital age. An avid reader Ko created a series on books.
Ko Yamazaki, Catalogue, black Belgian marble, 2016, 3 × 25 × 32cm
He works in wood while he is in Kyoto and stone when in Pietrasanta. He divides his working life between the two.
Credits
Producer: Sarah Monk
Producer/editor: Mike Axinn
Music: courtesy of Audio Network
Mutsu Shuro 2194_5, Joji Hirota & Teishiro Okitsu
I made a black cardboard box. My imagination of after moving the house, you always have one cardboard box. Never open stays one corner of the house, and you feel heavy to open it. You can just open and clean it. That’s all you have to do, and you never do it.
Ko Yamazaki:With the stone, it’s massive and heavy. Think that’s my expression of my feeling of heaviness.
Sarah Monk:So today, Mike Axon and I are back in Studio Pescarella, where we’ve come to chat with the Japanese artist, Ko Yamazaki. Pescarella is just outside Pietro Santa and hosts a number of sculptors and is well known for the welcome it gives to artists from all over the world. We find Ko polishing one of his pieces in the bright sunshine at his outside workspace. On his cavaletti are some rounded sculptures of yin and yang and a spiral work in white marble. We know Ko is originally from Kyoto and came via Paris to work in Pietro Santa in 1992.
Sarah Monk:He dusts himself off, and we ask him to introduce himself.
Ko Yamazaki:Hello. My name is Cole Yamazaki. I’m from Kyoto, Japan, and living, working in Petrol Center since ‘92. And I work mostly stone, but sometimes I do work wood, clay, plaster.
Sarah Monk:What brought you here?
Ko Yamazaki:My father spent time working in the marble in Colorado
Sarah Monk:Mhmm.
Ko Yamazaki:In the beginning of eighties, I think. And he mentioned about here, I left Japan when I was 17 and went to Paris to study. But I didn’t know if I really want to do art. I was more focused on painting, but I didn’t like staying in a room and just drawing. I was getting bold.
Sarah Monk:So your father suggested you might like to visit Pietro Santa Carrara and look at the marble. What happened then?
Ko Yamazaki:It broke my mind. Just loved it. It was too strong. I couldn’t decide to come here till 92.
Sarah Monk:Can you tell us where you were born and a little bit about your childhood?
Ko Yamazaki:I was born in Kyoto, and parents are high school teacher. My mother is the history teacher, and my dad is the art teacher. And, they are both busy, and I was kind of left over at my grandmom’s house. So, I kind of grew up with her. My mother was activist and feminist, so I had a kind of a strange education from her.
Sarah Monk:What were the activities at the time? Can you recall what camp protests she was involved in?
Ko Yamazaki:Well, she was always protesting for many things to to the government, and she was part of the communist too. So when I was 10, she told me I could go to Russia, camping in Pyongyang for two weeks for free. And I didn’t really understand what was meaning of Russia, the Soviet Union. And I just said, well, that sounds nice. I go there.
Ko Yamazaki:So, she was happy because she doesn’t need to take care of me for the whole summer. And then I went there, I came back in Japan, and I was so proud of myself and telling my friends I was in Russia. And then next day, no one talks to me anymore. Like, starts telling me, like, you spy.
Sarah Monk:Wow. That must have made quite an impression.
Ko Yamazaki:That was really shocking. And then next day I start going to my mother’s school at the library, study about the communist system and trying to understand why people are ignoring me and getting scared of me, and and that was a, yeah, good timing for me to interest the the politics situation.
Mike Axinn:Can we hear a little bit about what it was like when you were in the Soviet Union?
Ko Yamazaki:Oh, it’s just camping, big camping place with thousand kids aged zero to 18 or 17. Altogether, huge camping place. We went by boat to near Rajostok. I call it Nachotoka. So it’s only thirty six hours by boat.
Mike Axinn:And were you with other Japanese kids?
Ko Yamazaki:We were about 20 kids. All sort of, you know, communists. I was the youngest, 10 years old. The oldest was, I think, 18. Yeah.
Ko Yamazaki:Quickly, we become friends.
Sarah Monk:And were the other children mainly Russian or other nationalities as well?
Ko Yamazaki:Only Russians.
Sarah Monk:So what age were you when you left school?
Ko Yamazaki:When I left school was kind of tricky because at 17, I did the backpack traveling and stopped going to school. And I found the university in Paris, if you graduate the high school, I could go to the university over there. So I quickly went back to Japan and told my teacher, I accepted the Sorbonne, so you have to graduate me.
Sarah Monk:Were there any other family in Paris at that time or was it
Ko Yamazaki:No, just by myself. It was kind of extreme because I didn’t my parents aren’t wealthy people, so my mom could only afford a little bit support for me. But since I was under 20, I needed some guardian for me. And, this guy had apartment in San Clemente Plei, and I needed to stay at his building, which the lent was so high. And after I’m paying my lent, I don’t have much money to spend my food or anything.
Ko Yamazaki:So, you know, basically poor student life. But it was lots of fun going out and meeting lots of French people, including French, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Africans, and the cosmopolitan feeling. That was really nice for me.
Sarah Monk:And then your father suggested you might like it here. You came down.
Ko Yamazaki:Yeah. So he lent the apartment, huge apartment like this, the former airplane factory, and that was really cool. And so I spent nine months over there with him and start working at Bronze Foundry and also delivery job for galleries, and it was really fun. And I told my dad, I probably like more sculpture than painting. And he says, well, I just do it.
Ko Yamazaki:So, I start doing sculpture. I just found a studio near Pietrasanta.
Sarah Monk:Mhmm.
Ko Yamazaki:Sean used to work, and Neil used to work. John Greer was there too. So, that’s how I met Neil and other people, then slowly started making friends.
Sarah Monk:So from then forwards, you’ve been back and forth between Pietro Santa and No.
Ko Yamazaki:Actually, for five years, I didn’t really go anywhere. Stayed here mostly. I just kept making sculptures.
Mike Axinn:So what was your first piece of marble like?
Ko Yamazaki:I didn’t know what to carve. I wanted to do something abstract, but I don’t have the education to start with, and I don’t have any models. And so I just said, well, let’s carve my hand. And how was that? Were you happy with your hand?
Ko Yamazaki:Oh, yeah. I made two hands because one was stolen.
Sarah Monk:That’s a weird concept, isn’t it, to have your own hand stolen?
Ko Yamazaki:Yeah. I put it on the table, Glasgow, and next day someone interested buying my sculpture. And the morning I went, it’s all gone. So I said, well, I make another one.
Mike Axinn:Were there some big influences in particular where you said, oh my god, this is it?
Ko Yamazaki:Lots of influence. Like, concept of Jean Blair really helped me doing the figurative work. And other people like Margo Sawyer, she is now boss of Austin University sculpture department. With her, we did big installation work. She taught me lots about conceptual art, about installation.
Mike Axinn:Do you have any idea when you get a stone what the sculpture’s gonna be?
Ko Yamazaki:The interesting part about stone is you are limited by size, so you kind of make a limit. How do you shape your sculpture because of the stone size and then color.
Mike Axinn:Also, are some ideas that I imagine are influenced by you being from Japan. This idea of actually taking stone and forming it in a way that looks like paper,
Ko Yamazaki:they’re quite beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, I did the whole series of books and cardboard and anything with the paper products because I used to love reading books. I still do reading a lot, but not like before. But now, with a smartphone, etcetera, less reading and kind of feeling nostalgic about.
Ko Yamazaki:And I don’t wanna this culture to be disappeared physically. Stone could stay long.
Sarah Monk:That’s beautiful, because we are beginning to forget how to write letters, and a lot of people are reading less. And when you’re in Kyoto, what material do you work in there?
Ko Yamazaki:I do wood and clay and casting with plaster.
Mike Axinn:Oh, so that’s a whole thing because you don’t work in marble in Kyoto.
Ko Yamazaki:It’s possible, but it since it’s so good here.
Mike Axinn:So what else are you thinking about? What’s exciting for you right now?
Ko Yamazaki:There’s one sculpture I just finished, a kind of yin yang yang shape. During the COVID time, I didn’t have any motivation because you don’t go out, you walk in your house. So I have to do something, and I start researching what’s my motivation, why I do sculpture. So I start writing everything and start making funny drawings about touching sensibility. If we touch something, we get much more information.
Ko Yamazaki:The softness feels nice and hardness maybe feels cold. I thought if I could get the conclusion, I would tell someone this could be the better method to make a form.
Sarah Monk:I wonder whether you can think of a couple of pieces that you’ve worked on in your career that were special for you and why?
Ko Yamazaki:Maybe the cardboard box. I made a black cardboard box. My imagination of after moving the house, you always have one cardboard box. Never open stays one corner of the house. And, you feel heavy to open it.
Ko Yamazaki:You can just open and clean. That’s all you have to do, and you never do it. With the stone, it’s massive and heavy, and I think that’s my expression for my feeling of heaviness, but kind of joke too.
Sarah Monk:Can you tell us a little more about the books? I’m really interested in that series.
Ko Yamazaki:Yeah. One book that I made, open book, using natural broken surface, naturally broken cave madre, that’s what Italian calls. So, you kind of see the history of the geography. So, I call it Geograph Book. Because all the Al Qajani tells you, when you’re young, read the stone, talk to stone, and they can carve it, like, very nicely, quickly, and they seem like understand everything.
Sarah Monk:So thanks to Ko. You can see his work on his website, koyamazaki.com, or on Instagram at ko.yamazaki. As always, there are photographs of the work we discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com, and on Instagram at materially speaking podcast. If you enjoy materially speaking, please join our community. Sign up to our email newsletter.
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