Sky and Colors, Overlapping

ARTIST STATEMENT

The job of the washi craftsman is to make the material look its best and most beautiful. Such paper, the paper itself tells its own story.

For this exhibition, I added my own story to the artworks by using cotton to create a three-dimensional effect and using colors.

CURATOR'S STATEMENT

We have become too accustomed to seeing flat information in a flat way. The titles of articles on our smartphones and the images on social media are given priority to their superficial impact, and the overwhelming volume and number of pieces of information rush us to consume them one after another. What do the exhibited works say to us in such an environment of daily life?

Rogier expresses a three-dimensional perceptual world by combining the transparency of the Japanese paper as a support with the technique of Western painting, which involves layering colors. He creates layers of delicate colors and textures by layering the texture of Kozo (paper mulberry), the raw material of Tosa washi paper he grows in Kochi Prefecture, with raw materials colored with iwa-enogu (mineral pigments).

I want the viewer to be confronted with a complex sensibility that cannot be expressed through a monitor — his artworks convey a multi-layered world of light and color, woven together by lush green grass and flowers and a powerful sun. The work quietly tells us that even the most trivial information in our daily lives is layered with multiple layers of truth and interpretation.

Curator: Keiichiro Tao