KEIICHI TANAAMI
2014-11-10The upcoming exhibition will include large sculptural works in addition to new paintings, including the title piece, Cherry Blosooms Falling in the Evening Gloom, a large painting measuring 3 meters in width. His new sculptures are part of a series of new works that incorporate the motif of his 2012 work Red Drum Bridge, and include a powerful piece in which characters riding in a plane sit atop an uncrossable bridge. Tanaami says that, “it is in my personality to take even the dark experiences of the past and transform them into positive expressions,” however, the world depicted here may be a vision of Tanaami’s own ultimate paradise, transcending both good and bad, suffering and fear.
Many works contain many motifs associated with Tanaami’s childhood experience of war. Glowing, grotesque creatures personify bombs and the light of their explosions. Beams of emanating light are the searchlights of Japanese troops keeping watch for American bomber planes. The skeletal monsters that appear in his works represent war casualties, and at the same time function as figures of us, ourselves, who know no fear. A recurring character based on a motif that comes from Tanaami’s wartime memory of goldfish also frequently appears in his works, and is deeply connected to the sight of the light from the American bombs reflecting off of the scales of the goldfish his grandfather kept. Pine trees, seemingly pregnant with animal-like life forms, are based on hallucinations Tanaami witnessed when he nearly died from a pulmonary edema at age 44.
Exhibition runs through to December 13th, 2014
Nanzuka
2-17-3 Shibuya Shibuya-ku
Shibuya Ibis bldg. #B1F
150-0002 Tokyo
