ORITAKEI exhibition

"Colorful"

About Color

If one was to describe my works in a single word, surely the word “color” would be the best fit.

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With both subtle color schemes elaborately pieced together like puzzles and vibrant eye-catching colors, I want to get you to think about what color is to you. Even within the color we call “red,” there exists a wide variety of reds, such as brilliantly bright red, the warm red of fire, or the deep red of blood.

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Also, through putting other colors such as blue or green or yellow in its proximity, the expression of the color red changes from when it is seen on its own and when it appears adjacent to other colors. Moreover, depending on how we feel or our emotions on the given day we view the work, it will change into yet a different red.

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The number of colors I use in a single work are, at most, around eight colors. However, even with just these few colors there is enough power to depict the rich and vivid undulations of human emotion.

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I believe in the potential of color.

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About the Works

Unlike the way I do with colors, I do not strongly emphasize the human figures I depict. They are painted with rich emotions, however depending on the color scheme they are greatly abstracted, as though they have been subtracted down to what we could perhaps call symbolic notations of human beings.

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And what about if you hold up your camera and take a look at the works in black and white? In a colorless world they may feel very inorganic. Alternately, maybe with the color removed it will become easier to strongly feel their humanity.

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For me, it is specifically these artworks of representational people that serve as my comfortable means of expression for depicting human beings. I like observing people’s behaviors, facial expressions, and words, and occasionally gaining a deep understanding of someone through exchanging words with them, however I do not really like having direct contact with humans in the flesh. There are times when I feel disgusted by living human bodies. What I want to express in my artworks is not human beings themselves, but rather the highs and lows of human emotion.

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It may be most fitting to say that over the outline of human beings I am laying the colors of emotion.

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I implore you to please have a close look at these works. Then, when you return to your home and when you look back over your day, please remember my art pieces. There is no need to remember the small details. However vaguely, surely the colors that overflow from my works will be etched into the back of your mind and will long remain there.