I was born in a house in a riverside valley of a mountainous region of Japan. The sound of the water flowing in the river is still deeply ingrained inside my ears. Due to the mountains that drew near on both sides, the morning sun didn't ascend until around 9 am. Only a glimpse of the clear blue sky peeks over those hills. It was as if I could see another world through a crack in the ground, and in there, I felt a yearning. When it became nighttime the landscape completely shifted, vanishing into the dark, just as if the radiant stars were piercing my eyes, liberating the world unto me. The river usually makes me forget humans' muddled relationships. I always wanted to become unified with nature like this. I always felt abhorred to be accompanied with a physical body.

I became very irritated by the compulsion to eat; I prayed I could go a lifetime without eating. Sometimes I could not put up with the smell of garbage at night, so I went to the mountains to eat humus soil under fallen leaves. It had such a beautiful scent and was delicious. 
One time, my father invited fire in a mountain forest. Even though I understood what was going on I watched from afar and drew no closer. That fire was extremely beautiful. Rather than considering what kind of incident this was, I was charmed by the beauty of the fire before I knew it, and felt uplifted by it. I wanted it all to burn. 
On a rainy day, I saw myself reflected in a puddle. I felt beauty in things such as stones. 
I sometimes playfully wandered about in the forest on animal trails with no human scent.

I was deeply cautious with human beings. I often felt there must be things hidden in the forest, stones, trees, and water so I spoke to them. But there was never any response. 
My work originates through my body (as a medium) while living my daily life, giving form to a place in the intervention of my physical body in between space and existing matter, offering viewers an exchange of materials with this. By keeping the symbolic nature from reaching a maximum, my work fastens the viewer's gaze to suspend their physicality in midair. There is no criterion to express the content; the work is an installation with no "answer." Rather, the "answer" is sent back internally to the viewers. A consciousness of the space is allowed to coexist based on the realization that "I am here" and "I am there," something that brings about a neutral space. This is the feeling of existing in the boundaries of the world. My subject resides between private and public; the materials I use suggest my soul; physical body exists not as a substance, but as a process of living. 
I am influenced by tea ceremony, Noh, and haiku all of which fuse Eastern art with life and have shown me the spiritual way in everyday life. These were the practical austerities in daily life to reach the truth, by taking in the philosophies of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. A sword is not just iron it is spirit. 

There is Here, Here is There

A video of a burning house can be seen inside the darkness through a closed glass window over there, the sun is shining through the darkness while I feel enwrapped by the crackling of fire as the sound reverberates in the room itself. Another room has a gutter creeping down from the ceiling as well as a concrete well. Upon coming closer to look at the bottom of the well a video of an owl staring up toward here is visible. A speaker on a glass surface fills the underground atrium space with birdsong, giving the illusion of a divine spirit sent by a yatagarasu (a three-legged crow). If this temporary sloped structure on the ground surface of the hill is climbed to the top, a waterfall whose flow has been inverted upside down is confronted. … From Toyomi Hoshina's recent works the pool of memory based inside one's body and mind, in order to renew and connect the world, most people from the past master and encourage space, as conventions of the soul are lost and sites of ceremony deteriorate, since long ago spiritual barriers and places of prayer with physicality of body held the capacity to see the "layout for a shift change of the world." In Hoshina's recent works one can grasp a reorganization of his thoughts in the present, a recursion of the relational aspects between body and place, leading to the establishment of subconscious connector wires even in ordinary spaces and the interface of reality. A pilgrim appears and disappears connected to Yanagida Kunio's memoir, where he saw stars during the daytime in a small backyard garden shrine as a child or the world in "Alice's mirror world." 

Writing by Akihiko Tkami