"Connecting." Tomoka IshijimaMarch 2016th - March 3th, 14
Venue: Art Gallery T+
Date: April 2016th - April 3nd, 14
Exhibitor: Tomoka Ishijima (4th year, Japanese Painting course, Faculty of Art and Design)
Request a model, draw,
Ask the model to choose the next model.
This repetition has allowed the baton to be passed on
"Model Relay".
I met a guy from University of Tsukuba during this relay.
Introducing our students (drawing and Japanese painting)
T+review
Some of you may have heard the saying, "Even if you get to know someone at a rate of one person per second, you still can't get to know the entire human race in your lifetime." (And usually this is followed by, "That's why meeting people is like a miracle," but I personally don't like this phrase very much.) There are 70 billion people in the world, but in a person's lifetime, they can only get to know a very small number of people. In other words, the billions of people in the world are strangers to each other, and are just a motley crowd with whom we usually have no relationship.
So when the personality of one particular person suddenly emerges from the crowd, it gives an indescribable feeling, like finding a small seashell in a vast sandy beach. I felt something similar about this exhibition. It was an exhibition of many portraits. The people depicted are students from various faculties of Tsukuba University. Even though they are all students at the same University of Tsukuba, they are people with whom you have almost no connection, and you would normally not even notice them if you passed them on the street. The artist must have sincerely confronted each of these people, not just as models for his paintings, but as people, and created his works. In addition to the works, there were also files containing introductions to the people who had served as models in the exhibition room, which gave an idea of the artist's strong interest in people.
What was interesting was the way the models were chosen, called the "model relay." The model chooses the next model from among their acquaintances, who then chooses another, and so on, passing the baton to the next model. This seems to be what the title "Connecting" refers to. The connections that one person has with other people are limited, but if you continue to extend your connections from one acquaintance to another, you can get to know many people who you normally don't notice, and you become aware that each person has a different personality as they go about their daily lives. I think it was a good opportunity to get a feel for the individuality that tends to get lost in the crowd. (Ichikawa Taiya)
