[Title] Borderline Resolution
[Artist] Toshiyuki Sugai
[Date] September 19, 2014 to November 18, 2014
Today, we pass our everyday lives in a surging mix of boundless images and real landscapes, largely without giving it a second thought. The majority of generated images are vivid to the point of appearing genuine, with those portrayed on screens formed from countless numbers of dot particles. Yet despite this knowledge, we view the existence of such visuals as a natural matter of course, as if peering at actual landscapes through the windows of our rooms with the naked eye.
Here, hurtling suddenly into that everyday vista is a setting from a strange and unfamiliar land, defying any rational definition of normality. Projected on large screens tucked inside the latest Maison Hermès window display are manifestations of two distinct versions of the façade of the first ever Hermès store. Namely, the boutique located on Fauboung -Saint-Honoré street in Paris. The image of an actual photograph, depicting what can only be described as a foreign land cast in shades of the extraordinary, despite its clear reality; and, an illustration comprised completely of dots, clearly simulated, despite being clad in the shades of a sheer quest for authenticity.
These two different images are both plotted on what appear to be folding screen backgrounds – an LED panel on the right, and paper output from the trusty analog dimension on the left. As a result, people passing before the windows are prone to suddenly find themselves drawn into an interactive sensation of moving between two distinct worlds – the everyday and the extraordinary, reality and virtual image.
Buoyed by technology, people now spend the lion’s share of their normal everyday lives moving back and forth between various diverse worlds, largely unmindful of those transitions. As a result, there is a tendency for ambiguity to set in not only regarding boundaries of a physical nature, but likewise extending to the conceptual and metaphysical borderlines between reality and the extraordinary. Paris and Tokyo, photographic images and dot surfaces, the everyday and the extraordinary, the real and the digital…
Borderlines between worlds remain in constant states of flux and renewal. It is against the backdrop of such metamorphosis, therefore, that we find ourselves moving through the current day and age. Within the swelling whirlpool of information on all sides, this is a metamorphosis distinctively difficult to grasp, buffeted by the flow of everyday life speeding by at truly breakneck velocity.
Then again, upon sizing up the dotted light horse, which flashes its way back and forth between the two distinctive window realms, viewers should happen upon an instant at which they will find themselves fully tuned into this everyday picture.
Toshiyuki Sugai
Sugai launched the company Semitransparent Design in 2003. He has toiled to cultivate a truly original design approach, now used to network between the Internet and the realm of everyday reality in turning out highly creative Web advertisements. His exploits have earned him an impressive range of honors and awards both in Japan and overseas. Sugai has continued to exhibit his installation works over the years – at the NTT Inter-Communication Center in 2008; the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media in 2009; Creation Gallery G8 in 2010; and the Pompidou Centreer Pompidou in Paris in 2011. In 2012 he unveiled an installation dedicated to illustrator Ikko Tanaka at 21_21 Design Sight – just one more example of a voracious activity schedule advanced with the primary focus on digital media.