has been for sale for some time, as you have seen. The maintenance and ongoing development to keep our non-profit and idealistic platform for contemporary art running and safe from hackers etc. costs money that is no longer there. Because of small investments that are necessary now and the running costs, we will have to shut down with a heavy heart at the beginning of summer on June 21.
Meoto Iwa, or the Loved one-and-loved one Rocks, are a couple of small rocky stacks in the sea off Futami, Mie, Japan. They are joined by a shimenawa (a heavy rope of rice straw) and are considered sacred by worshippers at the neighbouring Futami Okitama Shrine (Futami Okitama Jinja. According to Shinto, the rocks represent the union of the creator of kami, Izanagi and Izanami. The rocks, therefore, celebrate the union in marriage of man and woman. The rope, which weighs over a ton, must be replaced several times a year in a special ceremony. The larger rock, said to be male, has a small torii at its peak. (Wikipedia)
Private collection
Shortly after the accident at the nuclear plant in Fukushima, I left Tokyo for a friend's place in Itoshima, Fukuoka, while my parents stayed on in Tokyo. The title of the painting, "It Escapes Me," comes from how I have gradually forgotten the loneliness and fear that I felt at that time. The shape of my painting surface--that of a billowing cloud--is a reference both to the images of the explosion at the Fukushima power plant, as well as the indeterminancy of memory. This work is an agglomeration of images from multiple registers: the black smoke of explosion is the outcome of decades of overemphasis on infrastructural growth, but also a crystallization of the loss of one's home and of nature, and a sign of the displacement I felt as I wandered alone in the streets of Nagoya and Osaka when I left Tokyo.
