[Title] After the Rain
[Artist] Takashi Kuribayashi
[Date] July 17 – September 15, 2009
“People seek to escape from this world, to other dimensions detached from reality. Within their dreams, in art and in the midst of reality, they board trains endeavoring to engineer such getaways. If the ‘station’ is viewed as the departure point on journeys, then we may also assume that the borderlines between reality and fantasy will also be found therein. Spurred on by a spirited mix of anxiety and expectation, heading off into new worlds, the thoughts turn to the blue skies above suggesting that rain showers have just passed.”
So describes Takashi Kuribayashi, the artist who has crafted our latest show window in the image of a “Station” – the gateway for travel derived from our annual theme of the “Beautiful Escape.” By definition, airports, train depots and other so-called “stations” are venues unique in their ability to usher the traveler away to totally different surroundings. In that sense, the “After the Rain” atmosphere in the space of a “station” serves as yet another poignant symbol of the blend of hopes and qualms embraced by travelers setting out for new destinations that they have never laid eyes on before.
The conditions after a rainfall provide a borderline for the transition from grayness to a world of brighter and more colorful settings. The rain has cleansed everything in its path, transforming the air and surrounding space into immaculate purity. In this sense, another aspect of the “After the Rain” sensation is the shift from gloom and darkness to a fresh and radiant mood, moving hand in hand with anticipations that something new and promising will emerge as the rain lifts and the skies clear.
Within the scope of all relative things and affairs, there will always exist spaces known as borderlines. As an artist who has continued to create works to address the theme of such borders, Kuribayashi has nurtured a particularly keen awareness of the lines between land and water – more aptly described as the spatial realm of water surfaces.
In these windows, the seals poking their heads up from the water puddles on the train platform are splendid symbols of the entities that exist between spaces. They may also be viewed as a plug-like presence between those two spaces, or perhaps even connecting on to dimensions above and beyond there. They are indeed metaphors of journeys into time and space linking the fantastical world into which the travelers are heading off to, and the real world in which they remain based in at present. Besides this, they are also guides to help pilot us down that road.
Takashi Kuribayashi
An artist specializing contemporary art born in Nagasaki Prefecture in 1968. After graduating from Musashino Art University in 1993, he enrolled at the Department of Free Art at the University of Kassel in Germany. Subsequently transferred to Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in Dusseldorf, where he earned a Meisterschuler and an Akademiebrief. Takashi Kuribayashi continues to create and exhibit an impressive range of works that address the theme of borders and boundaries – both in Japan and abroad.