Every species has its own mysterious abilities such as flying, swimming, seeing through the dark, etc. Each has its way to survive in this world. In their special biological feature and nature, Uchida finds the uniqueness of living organisms. By flipping through pages of animal encyclopedia or travelling to his favourite zoo just like kids, Uchida’s imagination transcends actual shapes and movements of the subject, which expands the motif even further. Thus, his cat has a rocket on her back as she ‘appears as she would fly away from jumping’ as Uchida says, and because rabbits are said to be living on the moon in Japan, for Uchida’s work, the rabbit is looking into a telescope in his spacesuit.
Transforming the artist’s playful picture of animals into mechanics requires powerful force. What shapes Uchida’s 3D works is the traditional technique of Tankin (metal hammering), applying various types of hammers to a piece of heated iron. First, he creates a small prototype with clay and wire, and then moves on to the process of hammering metal a several million times. ‘When it takes the shape I wanted it to be, there’s a sense of exaltation just like sports’, says Uchida, ‘when you know you’ve given all your power to it’. This way, Uchida becomes a homo sapiens with his unique ability to hammer metal to create chicken, penguin, cow, whale, etc., and continues to update his encyclopedia one by one.

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