GUTAI DICTIONARY

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Bottle Throwing (Shozo Shimamoto)

Shimamoto fills glass bottles with paint and slams these bottles onto a canvas on the floor to create his works. The paint in the shattered glass bottles splatters, and a dynamic work is created by throwing bottles filled with several colors of paint and splashing them around. This production technique has been developed in many variations. For example, the artist places the bottles on the floor and throws stones to break them. A machine like a pitching machine is used to throw paint-filled bottles. Climbing up to a high place and dropping bottles. A method in which a balloon or crane is used to ascend to a high place and drop bottles from there. In later years, the paint was sprayed outdoors over the entire area around the venue, creating an aspect of environmental art. The most famous and shocking of these variations was presented in an early outdoor exhibition held in a park in Ashiya. Shimamoto used acetylene gas to fire paint like a cannon from a 4-meter-long steel pipe, creating a huge work of art that splattered paint on a 10-meter square of vinyl.

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