Copyright © 2010-2025 Kaoru Akagawa All Rights Reserved.
Record of Ancient Matters
2012
墨、和紙、ワイヤー
額装寸法: 50 cm x 40 cm
There are many different problems that occur in the world these days; discrimination, friction in the family, stress in the material world, depression, etc.
This is a work I created after losing some of my hearing in my right ear due to stress, which has never recovered since. Sealed regrets in my life. The twisted form of my artwork embodies my wish to seal off stresses, regrets and conflicts that are accumulated in our modern global society. The strips bursting out from the end of the spiral is meant to describe the joy and passion that I strive to acquire in the future. The whorl shape represents a legendary dragon, the main characters in a Japanese traditional mythology “Record of Ancient Matters”, who is known to govern water. The Japanese idiom “Mizu ni nagasu”, that is in the centre of the piece, literary translates “to let something flow in water”, and could be viewed as an equivalent to the English idiom “water under the bridge “.
Based in Europe and creating a Japanese dragon that governs water in my contemporary artwork, I am crossing borders beyond time and space; West and East; traditional and contemporary; and literature and three-dimensional artwork. Through my art, I hope to build bridges to amalgamate the hearts of people and open doors to the borderless microcosm.
