「水中トリップ」
-蝋燭の灯でみる水の絵-
菅かおる 展
■協力 京和ろうそく丹治蓮生堂
■会場
ギャラリーアンテナ
〒600-8332
京都府京都市下京区五条堀川東入ル中金仏町215-6 増田屋ビル2階D
■会期
2010年12月15日～12月26日
■開廊日時
会期中無休 17:00～20:00
■URL
菅かおる
このたび、
ギャラリーアンテナで「蝋燭の灯でみる水の絵」を
発表をすることになりました。
私は、水を主題に絵を制作しています。
水の表現に金箔を使用するにあたって
いつも考えさせられることはその絵を鑑賞する時の光の状況です。
絵画の素材として、金箔は古代より使用されてきました。
日本で箔は、雲や空、空間としての象徴であったり、
様々な言葉にできない「間」の表現として使用されてきたように思います。
そして電気がなかった時代、薄暗い屋敷内で油や蝋燭の灯で観ていた絵画は、
今とは全く違った表情をみせたであろうと想像できます。
蛍光灯、白熱灯、または自然光、それぞれ光の状況によって箔の見え方は違い、
他の絵画素材よりも光の影響を受けやすく、また、それこそが箔の魅力です。
今回展示する絵は蝋燭の灯りを前提として制作しました。蝋燭の灯りのもと、
私の水の絵がどのような表情を見せるのかを観てみたい、
という考えが事の始まりです。
そしてそれならば、公開して皆様にも見て頂こうという試みになりました。
時間は、日が沈み始める17時から始まります。
ぜひ皆様で足をお運び頂き、ご高覧頂けますと幸いです。 菅かおる
About works by Kaoru Kan (text by Ami Fukuda)
‘ The world could be upside down.
Or it might be accurate to say that the world exists “totteringly”.
It is swinging all the time and could roll upside down at any moment.‘
On the way back home after visiting the exhibition by Kaoru Kan for the first time, the words of the French critic Jean Rouseet were recalled to me. While walking, looking up the sky above, clouds upon my head seemed as if they were the ocean waves telling me about the passage of time by coloring their edges into a fiery scarlet.
A clear, achromatous ‘water’ motif can be found in her paintings. However, what was painted in black was a gloom that seems more like turned-over cosmos.
Water is a fluid substance, and it has a specular surface as long as it lives where the light can reach it. In that sense, the paintings of watery surfaces reflect the imagery of the painter herself, in turn, reflecting the mental picture of the viewer. The paintings imprint the variety of aspects of their minds, changing every time they see the paintings.
The reflected light on water is wildly painted like a crystal in combination with lines, and to some extent, into deformation. Hiroshi Senju, the master of Nihonga, who taught her painting in art school in Kyoto, once mentioned of her works, ‘What do we see in her paintings, that are ever so indifferent and even unconsciously and finely expressed by her naive and innocent sensitivity? ’
I also felt this innocence, as Mr.Senju pointed out in her oeuvre, when I focused on the somehow bold way she expresses light in simple combination with lines; looking like some sort of symbol or sign, or even cryptogram.
Since 2008 I have held onto this image of a being with a matured odor within her paintings. This image can be found in the art of female painters who have worked for more than a decade.
For instance, in the series entitled “origin”, which she has been producing since 2008, the artist has based her theme on the ‘ocean’. While standing in front of the painting the roar of the waves gradually gets muted and move far away from me. Eventually I encounter the spread of the sea water which sounds close to me, like a murmur in my bloodstream. Hundreds of blood vessels inside the human body are worming on rocks and stretching into sea foam. We all come from the ocean and the ocean is the metaphor for our origin.
Here, the viewers will see some parts of human organs drifting through lukewarm blood. Looking at one of her paintings from the same series which is entitled ‘a red rock’, the painter murmured me ‘This may be the heart of ocean’.
In 2010, she started working on a new series with the motif of a glass vessel. Some are empty or partly broken, and others are filled with water. Among those, what caught my eyes the most is the painting of a small turquoise bottle. Fluid brushwork in Chinese black ink presents a shadow reflected on the bottle; glass is a solid substance. At the same time, it shares a common feature with water on a physical level. Both glass and water reflect the volatile factors on their surfaces. While viewing the painting, I was lost in the moment and fell back to a time of being lost in oblivion, sensing nostalgia. The imagery awoke my senses and the image of the painting opened up my memory and twisted the fabric of time. I should find myself and sew the open seam. This is not a bottle, but a mirror, I noticed. I could hardly believe what was painted in her work; it was not just a still-life bottle, but a mirror. It could reflect the past and the inner being of the viewer.
In the coming exhibition “Under water trip”, visitors will see her paintings of water candlelit after sunset.
“Water is transparent, yet limitless colors dwell in it.
Memories never disappear but last with changes.
I want to keep ever-changing memory alive.”
（excerpt from artist’s statement）
Water changes from moment to moment, just as the ocean. On a physical level, water is antithetical to fire. How could the pictured water provoke and unravel the frozen memories with the power of fire? How can pictured moments be released in her pieces?
We call December ‘Rou-getsu’, following the Chinese tradition of festive events held for Gods and ancestral spirits. ‘Rou’ means ‘to connect’ in Japanese. The exhibition will be held in the period just before the year meets with the new year in a space where the pictured water meets with candle flames. We hope you enjoy the odoriferous water during a tranquil evening by candle light.