2018 Artist note – The starting point for my first painting is Primitif.

2018 Artist note – The starting point for my first painting is Primitif.

I attempted to express through the primitive thinking the behaviors and consciousness that could peep into the human beings’ primitive life tens of millennia ago when the language had yet to be formed, amidst the uncertainty caused by the material abundance of our modern civilization and the enumerable biological absurdities.

The formative expressions neither modern nor contemporary may look like the worn-out and stupid Neo-Impressionism hundred years ago, but such expressions look like the primitive expressions of the cave paintings tens of thousands years ago. So, it is perceived that they will be the expressions not changeable in the future or several hundred years later.

The human beings of the time when there was no language would express jealousy and desire of love, and the cave paintings would feature the unconscious expressions ever-changing with the approach of life and death. Now, I would like to express the hardships suffered by our ancestors when there was no language like the cave paintings.

In the 1980s and 1990s or during my life in Paris, I used to work with emotion only, but in 2000s when I began to work in New York, I would work with a deeper emotion, using the lines primarily.

Then, I perceived that the colors approached me most emotionally through my eyes, while the lines were expressed by my reinterpreted DNA and the philosophy of unconsciousness gained through experiences.

The paintings born there are the expressions featured on black and white.

Then, a question may well arise why I selected the black and white among the numerous colors.

The origins of all the things of universe are made of darkness and lights, and they would be black when they are mixed, while they would be colorless when disintegrated. Hence, I judged that the deepest and the most primitive hues in the human beings’ eyes are black and white.

After all, our human beings have been born with their eyes that cannot but receive either of the two colors or black and white emotionally.

I would be certain of such emotion long years later.

However, I would face numerous obstacles, while I was working simultaneously on these two canvases of black and white.

Due to the limited attributes of the materials, this methodology could not be effective on the black canvas as well as on the white canvas. So, the black could not but be protruded on the canvas, while the white could not but be inserted deep into the canvas.

When I would like to express an artistic depth like the universe, the black used to be bright, and when I wanted to express a freedom, the white consoled and entertained me. However, my black and white methodology would face a limit. Namely, I would be affected by a mannerism caused by the repeated works.

How could I break free from such repetition? I would have been burdened by such agony. I could well be satisfied with the black and white whereby I could vomit everything that could not be expressed with language, but the repetitiveness thereof would be too burdensome for me to bear.

If we should draw tens of or hundreds of Munch’s ‘The Scream’, how could they be paintings? They would rather be handicrafts.

When I visited Japan several years later, I would stay in a capsule room a little different from the hotel. It was felt like a womb or coffin. Anyway, I tried to sleep in such a narrow space admitting my body only.

But I felt strange really therein. It was as if I were in a new space. Moreover, the clear and distinct thoughts took me violently to another world.

In the capsule hotel in Japan, the canvas on which I would begin to paint with the disintegration of the objects and their subtractions in my brain.

I flew the primitive matters now arranged scientifically into the endless space. Or an epoch-making canvas allowing me to be free from the repeated black and white works was born in my brain with no error. Thus, ~ Infinity ~ Series Yellow would be born at last.

It took almost a month to draw the widest possible space or a space with no objects.

It took ten times the time than the black and white paintings.

Just as a symphony composer works out Aria, quartet or trio, so I would not be bound by any single form. I did not decide on the objects that could be expressed in a primitive way of thinking. When I should like to draw free and playful painting, I would rely on white. In contrast, when I should like to express a depth, I would rely on black series. And when I should like to perceive an object in a refined mental flavor and line or when I should like to perceive an object in a restrained space, I would rely on the Infinite Series. Namely, I did not decide on a limit, while approaching the painting, in order to be free from passivity and repetition with boundless joy.

However, all these things cannot be free from an ism, namely primitive but instinctive category of thinking.