泣いた雫をいかせ

This exhibition focuses on the fundamental instinctive/cognitive desire underlying the act of “seeing”—namely, the mental process of seeking meaning and discerning form. This psychological phenomenon is called Pareidolia. It manifests from early childhood; at the early childhood education institution where I previously worked, we even conducted “pretend play” lessons utilizing this psychological trait. (Creation through decalcomania and geometric pattern combinations)

My work does not present unambiguous motifs or symbols from the outset. Instead, it leaves “white space” within the interplay of color, line, and form. When the viewer's gaze falls upon this space, their own memories, emotions, and dreams are projected onto the blankness, the ambiguous shapes, the vague atmosphere, giving rise to “concrete representation.”

This concrete manifestation might be a landscape I once saw, a place I longed for, or perhaps something I never saw or couldn't recall before. Or it might be an entirely unknown space, like a fictional vision born from the overlap of memory, image, and chance.

The viewer experiences apophenia* as the key to finding concreteness in the shapes and lines placed solely based on the artist's criterion of “painting-like goodness.”

What is certain, however, is that unbound by singular meanings or motifs, the viewer's sensibility and memory actively intervene. This generates a unique scene—one that is distinct for each individual—between “me and you” and “you and the work.” It is an interactive complicity, treating the painting—an inherently oppositional structure—as a device, akin to sharing a secret.

At that moment, I wish to quietly awaken “the image sleeping within you,” believing in the instant when your own memory and imagination overlap with my painting.

And when the brain captures that, it becomes only that, concluding the journey of imagination.

As this is nearly my first exhibition in Nagoya, I have selected works from recent years that clearly reveal my artistic identity, including new pieces, and structured the show to include a retrospective perspective.