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Light and Shadow
Kaoru Yamamoto

山本 薫



“Lovers 100” series
 
  Kaoru Yamamoto works in the aesthetics of technological sublime. She creates digital images in the computer moderated environment according to the logical construction of unique Japanese spatial contextual awareness. In her new work “Lovers 100” she is intuitively modelling the motion of traditional Japanese painting by putting a couple in love onto imaginable journey through the city of Osaka, which is represented by images of its famous places. This images work as spatial contextual awareness marks like a cartographic map, which present the environment of the user/viewer at the present time and location or at sometime could be anticipated future context. The context of the journey is defined in multiple ways. It is boundless like love itself. The work is composed of 35 individual scenes with no discernible central scene. The particular scenes are scattered around and the overall impression is one of randomness. Strategy used by the artist resembles of classical Japanese painting. For example, Jingoji Landscape Screen (beginning of the XIII century), where each individual scene is separated by small hills and banks of the river without any interference of other scenes, thus allowing a coexistence within the sphere of the picture plane.
The artist is literary cutting her work into separate pieces. “Cut” is kiri in Japanese language and is also a distinctive notion in traditional aesthetic discourse. The “cut” appears as a fundamental feature in ikebana in which organic life is cut off in order to let the true nature of the flower come to the fore. Or another distinctive example is the dry landscape garden which owes its existence to the landscape being cut off from the natural world beyond its borders. The best world wide known example is the Fifteen Rock Garden at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto. At Ryoanji the dry rock garden is cut off from the outside by the wall that is low enough to permit a view of the natural surroundings. The function of cut is most evident in the contrast between the movement of nature and the  stillness of the dry landscape.
Even though each individual image in the artwork is separated from others, the overall effect is that of interdependence. It is because these cuttings actually intensify the invisible lines of connectedness among the scenes, while interrelations are reinforced by the pervasive images of pulsating hearts and text messages.
There is important interplay between the objective reality of the city and then subjective presence of the sensation of feeling. Sensation of love could not be expressed in any direct way, so it is gently woven into the form of expression in such a way that the viewer could empathise with the artist this particular moment. 
The artist poses an an interesting challenge. By rearranging images according to individual choices  the  user/viewer can traverse through augmented reality of space and compose his or her own artwork with idiosyncratic meaning. There is a certain pleasure coming from uncertainty of multiplicity of meanings, which the viewer must deal with in a poetically-constructive way.

 

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