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Writer's pictureaomikikuchi

MATTERS & NATURE at TOMO, NISEKO

During Winter SKI season

https://www.tomoniseko.com/

Title:

Year:2020

Media:

Dimension: 8” round, 20cm


This is a copy of the cover title of Art As Experience by John Dewey.

John Dewey asserts that art requires long periods of activity and reflection and can only be delivered to those who are immersed in observing experience. He argues that we need to organize emotions and meanings from our experiences.

Experience is often thought of as personal, but it is important to recognize the world's problems from personal experience and share it with those who appreciate art.


Title: Fortune Catcher - Hello

Year:2022

Media:

Dimension: 8” round, 20cm


This work is one of the Fortune Catcher series.

I took the outline of my grandson's photo and embroidered the spider web. His raised hand gesture makes it look like he is greeting. For spiders, the web is his catcher of fortune that brings food. Various cultures have auspicious items, which are given as gifts to pray for good health and success. Buddha said that life is suffering, but that does not negate the hope that something good will happen. I believe that praying for the happiness and success of others, including ourselves, is a caring form of love.




Title: Fortune Catcher-1

Year: 2022

Media:

Dimension: 10” round, 26cm


This work is one of the Fortune Catcher series. I embroidered a spider web on the outline of my hand.

For spiders, the web is his catcher of fortune that brings food. Various cultures have auspicious items, which are given as gifts to pray for good health and success. Buddha said that life is suffering, but that does not negate the hope that something good will happen. I believe that praying for the happiness and success of others, including ourselves, is a caring form of love. I hope that this work, modeled on my hand, will bring peace and stability to the world and allow people to live casual lives.


Title: Fortune Catcher-2

Year: 2022

Media:

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


This work is one of the Fortune Catcher series. I embroidered a spider web in a rectangular shape.

For spiders, the web is his catcher of fortune that brings food. Various cultures have auspicious items, which are given as gifts to pray for good health and success. Buddha said that life is suffering, but that does not negate the hope that something good will happen. I believe that praying for the happiness and success of others, including ourselves, is a caring form of love. I hope that this work will bring peace and stability to the world and allow people to live casual lives.


Year:2019

Medium: Three-layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Canvas

Dimension: 41” x 36” 105x86x5cm


This work started by tracing the beautiful cone shape of Mt.Fuji. Mount Fuji is famous as the highest and most beautiful mountain in Japan. Formed by a volcanic eruption, this mountain is beautiful from a distance, but its surface is littered with pebbles and tourist trash. My “Mt.Fuji” is composed of the Chinese character for "苦-suffering", and objects symbolizing women's desires are expressed as images emerging from cracks. The four duck toys are actually modeled after those sold as souvenirs at the British Museum. The Indian duck represented racism, the ninja represented invasion of privacy, and the samurai represented war. The Statue of Liberty sits atop a mountain as a symbol of hope that we will always strive to secure freedom and peace in our uncertain modern world.



Title: Emaciated

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


Super thin bodies and high heels are women's desires. Women have these desires because they are brainwashed by commercial strategy. In order to sustain such thin bodies, women give up eating properly and such unhealthy life harms their health. High heels torture women's legs and dangerous to walk.


Title: Obesity

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


Everyone knows obesity is bad for health. It is easy to understand the fact, but avoiding a bad eating habit is a different story. As long as we enjoy our life with instant pleasures, it is hard to escape from this danger. Feeling excessive stress also leads us to overeating and heavy drinking. We call ourselves, Homo Sapiens, which means "wise man" in Latin. Actually, there is no obesity in nature. I wonder why we can not control our fat if we are truly wise enough.

I depict a frog which looks like a fat guy, and a butterfly with an American flag pattern symbolizing the country of obesity.



Title: Addiction

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


We tend to drop into an addiction without recognizing it. And we justify our behavior even if it is clearly an unreasonable habit. There are so many foods and drinks we easily drop into addiction.


Title: Desire

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


People try to make themselves look good. They want to draw attention to satisfy their approval desire. I found that the lipstick shape resembles a bullet shape. Lipsticks are used to attract people just like shooting their hearts. Bullets are used to scare or kill someone in order to fulfill a person's nasty desires. Desire is a keyword for these little objects.


Title: Eco-lux

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


Eco-lux means a product which is both ecologically friendly and luxurious. Meeting the demand of both ecologically friendly and luxury seems contradictory. However, eco-friendly products are actually expensive because they are made from genuine and natural materials. And also the meaning of luxury has been changing from simply gorgeous products or experiences to more satisfying one's heart with a story of sustainability of the world. This sneaker is sold as a Eco-lux product but it is made of common materials, nothing is ecological but just expensive with green leaves patterns. In this way, the image of "Eco" is used for anything in order to sell products.



Title: Reality

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


Every time I bought a new mobile phone, I was surprised at the improvement in quality, including the screen. Over the last decade, the technology of virtual reality has developed significantly. In the near future, we will live in a dual world of virtual and real. Can natural creatures distinguish between virtual and real? Can they live in a virtual world?


Title: Religion

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


Christmas is celebrated all over the world. But keep in mind that this is a religious event. Common sense is not always shared with anyone. At the same time, we need to try to understand something or someone who is totally different from us. Harari Yuval Noah says that Humans are born like pottery clay. They are formed under a unique culture and become specific people with specific beliefs and behaviors. It is difficult to abandon everything they have acquired over the years. Compassion with each other is the solution to getting along.



Title: Seeking

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round, 30cm


People are always seeking happiness. Sometimes they do not recognize how happy they are in their current place.



Title: Nirvana

Year: 2019

Media: Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment, Hoop

Dimension: 12” round 30cm


This is the image of nirvana. I work on Buddha's philosophy and know that the state of nirvana is the ultimate goal of our lives. The Buddha arrived there on his own for decades of practice. After enlightenment, he tried to help people from suffering. He preached to them that life is impermanent, insubstantial, and their craving creates suffering. I think for ordinary people, trying to go to nirvana is also a desire. People can live with calm minds just knowing Budda's teaching.



Year: 2019

Media:Original Dye Method inspired by Yuzen Kimono Dye, Three Layered Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment

Dimension: 47” Lx 20” W, 120cm x 50cm


This work is a remake version of my t-shaped black background work. The pink and blue frogs are in the heavenly world. The other two are trying to go there. One is desperately climbing while grabbing the vine and the other is clinging to the frog's foot. Kumono-ito ( Spider Silk ) is a novel by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, which is a story of one bad guy whom Buddha was trying to rescue from hell because he once helped a spider. I express heaven as the flower of morning glory and thread as its vine. The flower has “glory” in its name, and glory represents the celestial world. Its stretching vine is an image of a hand of salvation. The image of these two frogs struggling to go to heaven really overlap that of ours. As the work is dyed on extremely thin silk and layered with intervals, it will sway with subtle wind creating by fleeting. It also loses its realism due to the hologram effect created by transparency and 3D installation. My intention for this work is for the viewer to think about greediness and feel the impermanence and insubstantiality of this world.



Title: Vague

Medium: Silk Organza, Acid Dye, Pigment

Technique: Yuzen Dye

Dimension: 28.6” x 36”, 72 x 90 cm


This work, I took away a sleeve from a large kimono-shaped work titled Infinity Dragon and set it as a framed work. This was created by imagining the eyes of a reptile. We perceive the reality of the space we are in through our five senses. However, with the advent of VR, the concept of virtual reality was born, and now the virtual world and the real world are getting closer and closer in terms of vision. Even until now, our brains have not been able to accurately perceive everything, but how far will we be able to perceive and distinguish between the virtual and the real in the future? I expressed the ambiguity between vision and reality through the shape of reptilian eyes. Reptiles are also creatures that have vision like humans, but what kind of reality do they see?



Title: Life Frog

Media: Silk, Acid Dye, Pigment

Technique: Yuzen Dye

Dimension: !6” x20”, 40 x 50 cm


This work is one of a series of three works titled Life. The frog in the center depicts a brave figure that survived the severe natural selection from eggs to adults. In nature, all tadpoles look the same, but with the message that each life is unique, I put various patterns on the tadpoles that surround the frog.

Humans can live with various wisdom from society, but frogs have to do everything themselves from the time they are born. Staying alive is a difficult task. I think it is essential to think about non-human creatures in order to build a sustainable world.

This is my first work in New York. That was my first overseas life and my first small sized work.



Title: Life Cicada

Media: Silk, Acid Dye, Pigment

Technique: Yuzen Dye

Dimension: 16” x 20”, 40 x 50 cm


This work is one of a series of three works titled Life. In the center of the work, I drew a cicada that had just molted. It spends most of its life as a larva in the soil, becoming an adult to leave offspring at the very end, and the male screams with all his might to appeal to the female. And it disappears at the end of summer after the adult period of about a month at the longest. In this work as well, the larvae are colored in various colors to express the irreplaceable preciousness of each and every life. When we know the ecology of cicadas, we see the variety of forms of life there.


Title: Life Dragonfly

Media: Silk, Acid Dye, Pigment

Technique: Yuzen Dye

Dimension: 16” x 20”, 40 x 50 cm


This work is one of a series of three works titled Life. The dragonfly in the center expresses the image of enjoying life and dancing. I colored the larvae colorfully and drew them as if they were swimming happily in the water. Also, the dragonfly mating looks like a heart symbol, so I drew it as well. Both the frog's work and the cicada's work emphasized the diversity and harshness of life, but in this work, the word “life” became a verb from a noun by drawing mating. I think that the wonderfulness of living in the harshest of life was put into the work.



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