tie _ UNION SODA Fukuoka, JAPAN 21.Dec - 27.Dec 2019

• • music :

    naomi paris tokyo ( jan and naomi )

• tie / UNION SODA statement

  We always forget.

  How low pressure brings with it headaches.How every moment, we are being invaded.How we maintain our bodies by absorbing others.How my body is an assembly of 60 trillion cells.Bodies in pieces.How uncertain every truth is.How the recognition of the self brings with it a bottomless pit of sadness.Even so, how we live on with the premise of “I”.

  When we remember sad and hard memories, sometimes we feel our bodies shattering to pieces.When someone touches our skins, we feel an almost violent invasion of the coldness of their skins, and at the same time we feel our temperatures melt into them.As even at this second, my cells are falling apart and being born again,The existence of the self we call “I” is forever weak and fluid.We named the unification of such chances “I”and we are in need of others to tie that name down.

  These works are drawn in dots by converting my friend's ID photo into a pixel and stretching it to make blank space in each pixel.The grid-like color surface is integrated with eyes to make it look like a person.I superimposed the presence of self on the perceptual structure of the human.Such a state where the gathering of others is integrated without breaking is called " me " , and we need the others to maintain us.A collection of dots that creates an image of a person with the eyes of the viewer ( others ).That is, the work, and people are awakened by the perception of others.We hope that this work becomes a modest presentation of one's fragility, uncertainties, and the needs of others for existence.

• PS.

  I’ve been thinking that I have to think it over.Ever since the start of last year.I just have to think it over one more time.As I remember, it was a time which was heavy and cold like a rock.My plan that I had for a year of moving my studio to Gunma prefecture had fallen apart - I didn’t know what to do.I thought that I would quit art, that it was possible to put a seal on this feeling and move onto another path.I blamed myself who had done nothing until then except for art, I was exhausted.This March, I will leave the Honshu region behind me and go back home to Fukuoka.It wasn’t the corner of the west that I escaped to; I realized it was a move towards the deepest part of my body.I couldn’t stop.I borrowed an apartment, made a studio, and started on the new series.

  In the dim white box, I came to learn about myself.The indifferent process of painting turned into a mending process piecing together my desperate identity.It was a tie that held me together.I realized that even in fragments, it mustn’t break.To live, to continue to live, we must tie them together.

  Perhaps, I exist in a similar way as this painting.We are sustained - swaying and penetrating into cracks.No matter how long a blank, or how big an emptiness I feel,Encounters will never stop.

  PPS.

  I would like to give a heartfelt thank you to my friends and to Ms.Seta, the gallerist - they mended my broken self together at a hard time when I decided to move from Kyoto back to Fukuoka. Also to Mr.Kodera, who stayed by me for all these months, with all due respect, thank you.