小さな作品 with English version

今日は小さな作品がひとつ完成しました、少しづつ、ですが、自分が産み落とした何かが増えてゆくというのは、嬉しいものです。明日はMITにてプレゼンがあるので、作品用のステイトメントも用意しました。日本語にするのは恥ずかしいので止めておきますが（シャイなんで）。「美しい」という言葉は、僕の作品のためにあるのだなあ、なんて思う。

A painting has been historically likened to a window. As a viewer stands before the painting, s/he can feel as if a certain space is spreading behind it. It is a flat plane, but it also has a certain space. Likewise, a painting can be compared to a mirror which is a two-dimensional plane reflecting a three-dimensional environment. Numerous artists gravitate to the mirror as a motif, which symbolizes perfect representation of reflection.

One series of my work is the WHITE PICTURE SERIES, which were made by means of a specific technique. If you scratch the back side of a mirror, the scratched parts become transparent, mere glass, and then you can join the scratched mirror and a piece of plain canvas on which nothing is painted. On the scratched part, the viewer can see the white canvas through the glass, while on the unscratched part, the mirror reflects the viewer him/herself or the surrounding.

This work involves this pairing of altered mirrors and canvases, in other words, both two and three-dimensional elements. Therefore, the viewer will perceive two opposite feelings: s/he can perceive a certain space through the mirror, but at the same time, s/he cannot turn her/his eyes away from the flat canvas.

According to Gestalt psychology, people can never perceive a figure and ground of an image at one time. That is, we cannot look at a figure when we are looking at the ground behind it, and we cannot look at the ground when we are looking at the figure in front of it. Similarly, with my works, while the morror and the canvas lie on a single plane, viewers cannot visually grasp the two component parts simultaneously. Thus, it is as if the viewer cannot help perceiving two opposite impressions, or more precisely, will pass convulsively between two directly opposite feelings.