"make up" Yuko Asai January 2010, 1 - January 25, 2010
Venue: Art Gallery T+
Date: December 2010, 1 - January 25, 2010
Exhibitor: Yuko Asai
(1st year Master's student in the Department of Art and Design)
An exhibition of video works with the theme of makeup.
T+review
The makeup and makeup tools are reflected in the large black eyes of a perfectly armored woman. It's a flawless direct mail, like an advertisement for a cosmetics company.
Recently, I learned that Japan is the second largest investor in cosmetics in the world. However, most of the funds are apparently used for advertising. Indescribably beautiful women are selected for advertising, and makeup is applied to make their faces, which are already beautiful even without makeup, even more attractive. For skin as smooth as a peach, powder is used to erase pores and make them look whiter. For lips that are as moist as after eating a juicy fruit, lipstick is used to enhance luster and color. For eyes that are modest and clear, and seem to be about to speak, eyeliner, false eyelashes, and eyeshadow are used to accentuate the side. There is no end to the examples like this. Products are constantly being replaced by newer and more revolutionary ones, and people seek better products and try more advanced makeup.
What brought all this talk, which seems to have been written without any context, to my mind was none other than the exhibition "Make Up." There were paintings using nail polish and works that depicted lips with lipstick like flowers, but what particularly shocked me was a picture that included the right eye of a face. In the pupil of that right eye, the movements of the person applying makeup are clearly reflected. Starting with no makeup, a black line is drawn around the edge of the eye, eyelashes are added, a wider line is drawn again, and shadows are layered on multiple times. As the woman's movements are reflected in the picture, the eyes, which take up most of the screen, change, evolving rapidly into large, powerful eyes. The momentum is so vivid that, without the viewer noticing, the eyes undergo a subtle transformation of their own accord.
But at a certain point, it becomes difficult to judge whether someone is attractive or not. The person reflected in his eyes does not catch his eye, and he starts painting other parts of his face with black. Gradually, the black takes up more and more of his face, until it completely consumes it.
Can such a thing be called "make up"? I wondered, and instinctively looked up "kesho" in the dictionary. The Kojien dictionary says, "to polish or decorate the surface to make it look beautiful." However, the definition of beauty differs depending on culture, country, gender, individual, etc. Some people may find a face painted jet black beautiful. In fact, even in Japan, there is a culture that paints the face brown and manipulates each part so that the original shape is indistinguishable, so makeup has an infinite range. And the fact that the works are "made up" on the subject of "make up," which has infinite potential, is what attracted people's attention and made the exhibition itself seem to have potential.
(Mariko Tsuji)
