"指先から世界を - From Fingertips...The World”
at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2018)
Sometimes that one comment or that one action can stir something in a person and bring about an unforeseeable chain of events. But there must be relatively few people who live their lives contemplating just how much significance there must be in that one comment they might make. Tending to be forgotten in the course of the days we go on repeating is thought. If the accumulation of such things or the simple tasks we casu- ally perform from day to day were to make their way around and about and end up being of bènefit to someone, or to the world, what could be nicer than that? In the day-to-day life of the artist that can seem like a headlong plunge through a tunnel with no exit in sight, if each of those little processes of work that at first glance seem unconnected; originating from these hands, these fingertips, were to illuminate someone, protect someone, lead to someone smiling, there could be no greater joy. Sketches of my hands and fingers, said to be the points of origin where everything is brought forth as an artist, I make into a collage. The future that I would hope for them to connect to after making their way around and about their trajectories materializes in a child's smile. Observing hands is a task like what was taught in my student days as the basics of painting, and it seems like focusing on my hands and observing them is something I hadn't done for many years. It's the task of turning my gaze once more at the points of origin for the very act of producing my art. Words said yesterday. A hand grasped today. The smartphone tapped a minute ago. If I can prompt someone who saw my piece to imagine the world that might extend out from that one casual action in their daily life, I think I will have brought about a little instance of Butterfly Flutter myself.
“1983“
at SOIL Collective and Artist-run Gallery, Seattle, WA (2018)
“Something We Lost”
“HOLE“
