"Beyond This Fence" Yoshitaka Kojima July 2012th - July 7th, 17
Venue: Art Gallery T+
Date: December 2012, 7 - January 17, 2012
Exhibitor: Yoshitaka Kojima (1st year master's student, Department of Art and Design, Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Studies)
An exhibition of three-dimensional art and video installation.
T+review
There are several U-shaped fences set up on the floor of the gallery. A projector is installed on the wall at the entrance of the gallery, projecting images onto the wall opposite the fence. The images change the relationship between the "other side of the fence" (=wall) and the floor we are standing on. The simple interior has the potential to change relatively depending on the surrounding situation.
At the beginning of the video, nothing is shown. Suddenly, a person appears from off-screen, holding a paint can, stops in the center of the screen and crouches down. Even at this point, the viewer will likely feel something is wrong. This is because the video was shot from a perspective looking down on the person in the video from directly above, and is projected onto a vertical wall. Which is the ground - where the viewer is standing, or where the person in the video is standing? This creates a strange feeling.
The person in the video plunges his hand into a paint can and draws a circle in the center of the screen. He then paints and expands the circle in black paint into concentric circles. This is done slowly by hand, without the use of a brush or paintbrush. Watching the artist work, it suddenly seems as if he is drilling a deep black hole in the ground. The black of the circle seems to represent a space that continues underground, and there is a sense of depth, as if one is being sucked into the hole in the ground.
While I am idly pondering this, the circle continues to grow larger, and the proportion of black taking up more of the screen increases. The black circle that had looked like a hole gains more presence, looming over us. It looks more like a black wall and no longer feels like a hole. The black circle that had previously looked like a hole in the ground has grown in size and now looks like a wall, making its presence more apparent. Before you know it, the floor on which the viewer stands and the floor in the image have been swapped. Even as the circle grows so large that it spills out of the screen, the person in the image does not stop drawing a circle. The screen is increasingly covered in black, until finally the image is completely filled with black.
It took about 60 minutes from when the circle started to be drawn until it completely covered the screen. During that time, along with the gradual changes within the screen, the viewer felt the change in the relationship between the floor on which he stood and the floor within the screen beyond the fence. (Emiko Okano)
