



Artist Statement
I witnessed a number of cicada exuviae holding onto a tree near the train station. Their behavior of keeping their body on the tree by using only their small hands was emitting the same thrill as rock climbing. I immediately decided to incorporate their strength in my art.
Alex Honnold, one of legendary climbers, took free solo style (not using any tools but his body parts) and smoothly climbed El Capitan, which is a nine-hundred-meters-high rockwall in Yosemite, in only four hours. I painted actual people and daydreams that I saw in Hamamatsu. My “be here now” mindset perceives existentialism. It let me drop and turn over cicada exuviae with paint on canvases and tuck tons of cotton pads on my paintings while dipping those cotton pads in house paint instead of glue. And my unconsciousness has started making sculptural paintings, which have objects holding on their vertically standing canvases, without differentiating between collage and assemblage.
It was December when I encountered the exviae like strange fruit, which seemed
inappropriate in the timing of their appearance. But they left innovations in my painterly style. Ifeel like suspending the work in progress, while following the inspiration of Kamoe's “light andspace” illuminated by the traffic signal LED in winter.

