Exhibition Review: <The Journey> Kanae Funayama Exhibition "Bridge of Scenery" Gallery Face to Face July 4th (Fri) - July 13th (Sun)

I went to the Kanae Funayama exhibition "Bridge of Scenery" at Gallery Face to Face.

The theme of this exhibition is landscape painting, but it has a very interesting characteristic. In these works, I feel a sense of depth, or rather, a duality between here and there.

A landscape is something viewed from a certain place, but in these works, the artist's <presence> seems to slip in somewhere.

Even in the work above, the bottom half feels like the appearance of the place where I am, and the top half feels like what I saw while looking out.

When you turn this painting upside down, that separation between the two becomes clear.

The center that organizes the top of the painting and the center that organizes the bottom of the painting are clearly different.

We live in reality. But when we try to take a step toward the future, that landscape is connected to the future, to an ideal. Kanae's paintings this time seem to weave together those two things: the dream world of the ideal and my physicality, which is bound by reality.

When you rotate the same painting ninety degrees, those two things become clear.

While having perspective and depth, I felt a duality where the other side is actually inverted and covering over it.

Representing myself heading toward the ideal of the future in a recursive way, I couldn't help but think of Kotaro Takamura's "The Journey": <There is no path before me, the path is made behind me.>

In this work, not only the top and bottom but also the left and right are strongly expressed. It is an abstraction born from the concrete, and I became convinced that abstraction not only pulls up the depths of the viewer's consciousness but also makes the artist aware of their own unconscious.

It was a solo exhibition that made me realize that things one does not intend to draw end up being drawn.

It is still ongoing, so please feel free to visit if you would like.