"It's Red" Akari Tanaka November 2012, 11 - November 19, 2012
Venue: Art Gallery T+
Date: November 2012, 11 (Monday) - November 19, 2012 (Thursday)
Exhibitor: Akari Tanaka (2nd year, Western Painting major)
"At the end of autumn
Red autumn
Red Love
Try collecting them
I wonder
Try showing it
Try crying
I laughed a little.
T+review
The exhibition was titled "Collecting Red Love in Red Autumn." Small artworks with themes of lovers and romantic feelings surround the gallery walls. Love is a very personal and subjective emotion, but when it becomes the theme of an artwork, I realized that this subjective emotion can be "shared."
This was especially evident in a phenomenon occurring in the center of the gallery at this exhibition. In the center of the gallery, a string was hanging from the ceiling, to which many palm-sized pieces of colored heart-shaped paper were attached. Similar heart-shaped pieces of paper were scattered on the display stand and floor just below. Among the many hearts, several pieces had words written on them. Viewers were free to write whatever words they wanted. There was no specific content to write, but perhaps influenced by the theme of the exhibition, the overwhelming majority of the words were related to love. They were (presumably) feelings about a loved one, the happiness of love, or sadness. These honest words, which may make you feel a little embarrassed, but which somehow warm your heart when you read them, have been written by the viewers' hands.
Who are these words intended to be read by? Many of them were likely written with a specific person in mind, but it cannot be said that they will only be read by that specific person. As they are exhibited in a gallery, it is inevitable that an unspecified number of people will look at them. Moreover, the drawing paper without a name written on it makes it impossible to identify not only the recipient of the words, but also the sender.
Because they are anonymous and available for anyone to see, the written words leave the writer's control and become independent. And, having left their master, these words become purely "feelings" and can be "shared" with other viewers as part of the work.The artist's works likely play a similar role. The theme of love, an extremely personal emotional movement, becomes something that can be "shared" by becoming a work of art. Viewers who look at the work, which is now unspecified in terms of sender and receiver, compare themselves to the work, empathize, and gain confirmation of their own feelings. (Okano Emiko)
