My stomach is growling. We’re lucky. They say you always realize the terrible things after they’ve passed, like puddles after a typhoon. Our misfortune has been completely cleared away. The heavens somersaulted! I heard there’s a short book that never ends, and although I haven’t read it, I asked for a copy. Stories of bird horns, flying fish, seashells, and clay dragons started forming a chain in my mind like beads. But they kept swirling, and I couldn’t get them out of my mouth. Half-dreaming, a green sandy plain spread out before me, and above my head was a deep, clear sky with a perfectly round, golden-colored full moon floating in the middle. It’s not like there’s nothing in the sky. Music comes from everywhere. The insects ‘ ensemble is a strange, buzzing sound between the rooms, among the grass, on top of the trees. Even the snakes join in, hissing and chirping harmoniously with the insects… Then, a sudden evening shower pours down, and now the whole garden is a puddle, with everyone swimming, diving, flapping their wings, and giggling.
2024│acrylic on canvas│224×365 cm
I wish I had a hundred hands. Or ten, or even three. Well, no matter how many hands you have (if you are a painter trying to capture the world), they will not be enough. However, to begin with, if creation is the essence of the world, that is, to transfer its power and to seize it, then creation is the means to transfer that power and to express that reasoning. Gardening, cooking, architectural construction, and any other production is all based on preparation, the soil, and the foundation. There is no room for speculation (or clever ideas) here. Rather, what is prepared in this manner is the space beyond the threshold in which the world is born and raised, a space that no intelligent person could ever reach. That is, space is everywhere even if a hand did not form it, and if there were even the slightest groove, crack, or opening, tiny roots, countless hands, beards, and nerves would immediately target it and extend to the opposite side, getting tangled up here and there but still covering it like a vast heavenly net, sparse as it is and yet leaking nothing. It is the vast net of the universe that covers this bleached moment of time and space, in which the pitiful intelligence of humanity dwells, that is the countless hands that have been there from the beginning, painting (i.e., covering) the picture. There is no way to count them.
Fireworks appear to have the same form when viewed from any angle. They might look like a halo, like a Ferris wheel, for example. Similarly, the stars in the night sky always appear to be in the same arrangement, seemingly revolving around the earth. What we mistakenly see (as a painting) could be nothing more than this Ferris wheel or constellation. The flat, unchanging (mundane) aspect of its form is merely a reflected image of the extremely localized limitations of our time and space. The first segment of the universe is already far beyond the speed of our eyes (light) to observe it! Always! It is flying away in the other direction, and yet its whole remains the same, and that is the image of my speculation (and method).
If one gets lost, it is because, for some people, the main road does not exist in the first place. Therefore, I whistled with a lazy gait and walked on. I know that any possibility is utterly impossible despite the myriad possibilities for how one can live. That’s right. I’m a creep, good for nothing, who amounts to nothing in life.
2023│acrylic on canvas│163.7×91 cm
Kenjiro OKAZAKI
Artist and critic. Born 1955 in Tokyo, Japan. Okazaki has held a large-scale solo exhibition at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (2019-20). Always at the forefront of genre-defying artistic production, including the 8th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2002 as director of the Japanese Pavilion, he also pursues a career as a writer, focusing on art criticism. His major publications include “Conditions of Renaissance Experience,” “Abstract Art as Impact: The Concrete Genealogy of Abstract Art,” “Sensory Eden,” and “Topica Pictus.” His collection of works include “Retrospective Strata” and “TOPICA PICTUS” among others. In 2014, BankART held the exhibition, “The Utterance of Forms.”