“TABLE MANNER LIFE, SAVE, AH~ #8” by YAGI Eri from 20230909 to 20231001
Ritsuki Fujisaki Gallery is pleased to announce “TABLE MANNER LIFE, SAVE, AH~ #8,” a solo exhibition by YAGI Eri from 9th of September (Sat) to 1st of October (Sun).
YAGI was born in Miyakojima, Okinawa, 1994, and graduated from BFA at Musashino Art University, Department of Oil Painting in 2017 and MFA at Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Oil Painting Techniques and Materials #1 in 2007. Her selected solo exhibitions include LIFE, SAVE, AH~ #6 (Token Art Center, Tokyo, 2022), I AM A GOOD GIRL LIFE, SAVE, AH~ #2 (Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo, 2019), LIFE, SAVE, AH~ #1 (Yotsuya Unidentified Studio, Tokyo, 2018).
She is currently enrolled in Ph.D. at Graduate School of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts.
Artist’s website
This exhibition presents the eighth of “LIFE, SAVE, AH~” project which was started from 2018.
* About “LIFE, SAVE AH~” project, please refer to the exhibition text by Token Art Center.
https://token-artcenter.com/archive/16_yagi
The part of title, “Table Manner,” comes from the board as a place to arrange fragmented images, and the rules and constraints of the board, she says.
Table manners, as they are commonly known, emerged in Western aristocratic culture in the 13th century.
The gesture of cutting up food on platters and serving it to visitors overlaps with the composition of this exhibition, which represents the broken up watchtower from various angles.
In the process of creation, she says she goes back and forth between two states: immersion and irony. In other words, an euphoria by soaking in an idea and a clownish observation towards that idea.
What makes her work unique is that, while adhering to a single dream, she consciously and unconsciously overlaps the behavior and phenomena of modern people’s life with an infinite regress of observing that state, then observing that, then observing that, then herself observing that.
And, she affirms the phenomenon itself as something that cannot be escaped in the present age.
YAGI ironically reenacts (and at the same time immerses herself into) the psychological state in which conspiracy theorists find a connection between everything.
In the exhibition, tableaus depicting dissipated watchtowers are placed at equal intervals (according to a certain manner).
Then they are cut into pieces by the host’s hands and placed in their respective places. We, the visitors, may sense something in the order, the arrangement, the painted objects, and the connections. The lines are extremely precise, and certain parts are intentionally closed-up.
The extremely orderly arrangement of the lines makes us feel a sense of necessity.
We see shadows that sway between the bits and pieces of the object of immersion and ironic observation, which may be very meaningful for her.
In the Old Testament: Proverbs, the following statements states;
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the honor of kings is to investigate a matter. (Old Testament: Book of Proverbs 25:2)
Mystery is the prerogativeness of God, and the king is called upon to lead the people as close to the mystery as possible.
Here, the paradox arises when, hypothetically, the king, assimilated with God. It creates the mystery, but at the same time cannot touch it.
Namely, her attitude of repeating the structure, immersion and irony, which appeared to be an infinite regression, is actually like looking into two matching mirrors in the sense of being outside the whole and the whole.
Of course, this paradox arises because it contradicts the premise of God ∉ everything but God, but physically there can be no infinite regress or matching mirror. (There is no infinite matter or perfectly parallel mirrors.)
In other words, God (= transcendent being) is a being required by metaphysical logic and cannot exist in the physical.
Paradoxically, in this exhibition, the fallacies and errors that cannot help but exist in the physical level will be brought into relief by infinitely exquisite brushstrokes.
