'Mr. Tatsuo KAWAGUCHI (born in 1940) is a major contemporary artist in Japan and a professor at the University of Tsukuba. He has participated in many group exhibitions, and has held solo exhibitions in Japan and abroad since the early 1960s.

The relevant theme throughout all of his work is the relationship between the visible and the invisible. In other words, he creates his works using materials in the real world, and awakens the viewer's sense of time and space, aesthetics, life and death, and so forth, with his work functioning as a transparent passage.

The materials in Kawaguchi's works are partially hidden: sealed in a way that the viewer cannot see them directly. For example, he covers seeds with lead and lotus leaves with beeswax, and embosses fossils against paper. His methods thus leave room for the viewers' imagination. The act of sealing preserves life and information energies, while giving the viewer the freedom to exercise his or her imagination.

The objects sealed in the ATM exhibition this time include seeds, fossils, lotus and newspapers. The seeds symbolize "birth" while they are connected to a future time. Fossils symbolize "death" and direct one's attention to the past (death linked with the idea of revitalization). "Sealed Time" represents the history of several billion years since the dawn of life, while at the same time suggesting the potential of the future.' - extracted from the website of Art Tower Mito

Artist biography is included.