Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
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STATEMENT OF WORK
My work is about "landscape" associated with the memories that surround my everyday life. My studio practice transforms the landscape into abstract drawings on canvas and paper with ink, acrylic, watercolor, oil pastels, photographic images, and collages. I have been intrigued by the nature of memory since it is always with me despite its invisibility and intangibility. When I started the drawing project "Equivocal Landscape" in 1998, I intended to make one drawing every day, representing my memory of the day as a tree. Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel "Never Let Me Go" inspired me to perceive how we identify ourselves not by our appearance but by our memories. This inspiration emphasized my intent in memory and spurred me to "gaze" at memory to observe what I am. Mathematics, which I majored in at college in Japan, also helped me clarify ideas in my art. For instance, a mathematical way of seeing what and how natural numbers exist allows me to conceive how memory might compare to them.
Equivocal Landscape
I started the "Equivocal Landscape" drawing project in 1998 to depict one drawing daily in a sketchbook. The front cover of National Geographic Magazine inspired me. The cover image was a landscape of trees punctuated by the pale amber skylight in the background of an African landscape. I could imagine the trees looking as if they were having a conversation with each other. So, I began creating a "tree" of the day that expresses a fragmentary conversation derived from my memories. After over twenty years, "Equivocal Landscape" has become a visual autofiction diary.
contact: tagth0729@gmail.com