SEIZAN Gallery is pleased to present “Fires on Another Shore,” a solo exhibition by Motohide Takami. Takami has exhibited both in Japan and abroad, and his artworks explore the human tendency to consume events that befall others as somehow unreal.<\/p>\n
Takami was living in Yamagata prefecture when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck in the region. Although large earthquakes had happened elsewhere before, he felt unease at the way people suddenly began preaching the value of art in extraordinary times, as if they could only do so after going through disaster themselves, and further noticed the way issues surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant seemed forgotten as time passed. With his attention drawn to the fluid nature of human empathy, he began creating works that visualized the unique psychological landscape that lay behind such tendencies.<\/p>\n
Whether it be the recent earthquake on Japan’s Noto Peninsula, international conflicts such as the war in Ukraine or the crisis in Israel and Palestine, or even the realm of art where Takami himself resides, the nature of people’s interest in “others” remains similar in structure, regardless of nation or circumstances. It could be said that this mentality, reminiscent of the Buddhist expression “a fire on the opposite shore,” is the core of Takami’s practice.<\/p>\n
By creating dioramas depicting burning houses or cars and then rendering them on canvas as fake, “low-resolution” landscapes, he instills viewers with the complex feelings of an “onlooker” who is “watching catastrophe from a safe distance.”<\/p>\n
Whose organic gaze is it that is cast upon these vividly colored, yet shocking images?<\/p>\n
At the same time, the vague eeriness and discomfort that remains with viewers after observing Takami’s “fires on another shore” may also inspire us to look closer at our present and future.<\/p>\n
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