In my paintings, I work to fragment both the outside and the inside of the picture plane in order to expand them.
First, to create a mechanism for the image to expand outward, I paint images that do not fit within the frame of the canvas, and then I intentionally create areas of blank space where the image is missing or not painted. Sometimes, by using canvases that appear to be cut into fragments, the viewer is made to imagine that there are images that continue outside of the fragments.
Next, to express the fragmented nature of the images I draw inside, I draw the following two motifs.
One is that which captures existence using the five senses, including sight. And the other is something that is said to have existed in the past.
Unlike sketches and sketches before moving on to the main painting, I use objects that are close to me to create three-dimensional objects before painting. I treat them as the origin/source for constructing the painting, and from these I develop the image in fragments.
Furthermore, I incorporate historical objects, heritage, ruins, and folklore that I cannot perceive with my five senses, in other words, things that are said to have existed in the past but cannot be captured in their entirety at present, as fragmentary information from various periods.
When the viewer perceives a painting that has “fragmentary” in different meanings, outside and inside, he or she first imagines beyond the depicted image. Then, in the viewer's brain, a subjectively supplemented world is constructed. By potentially encouraging the viewer to follow this procedure, I believe that my work serves as a “device that points to an invisible presence that is only complete when perceived by the viewer.
【About the "Yobitsugi" series】
In recent years, I have been developing a series of paintings, titled "Yobitsugi" that seem to be a series of separate paintings joined together.
"Yobitsugi" is one of the techniques of "Kintsugi," a process of repairing chipped pottery or lacquer ware with gold, in which the missing part of a vessel is filled with a piece of another vessel and repaired with gold to make a new vessel.
While the so-called "Kintsugi" is a form of repair and has a strong meaning of "healing" a vessel that is still alive, I feel that "Yobitsugi" is a ritual to "revive" a vessel that has been dismembered and died.
Just as each fragment of a vessel has its own story to tell, I hope that the spliced paintings will remind us of the invisible existence that continues outside of each fragment.