The Sun In The Corner

2023 Oil pastel Dimensions variable

An image of the sun is discreetly depicted in the corner on the reverse side of the screen, as if echoing their solo exhibition’s title "If The Sun Had No Name", held at Chiba Prefectural Art Museum in 2023.
The work, which seems like a crayon drawing produced by the hands of a child, is inspired by an episode in which Yamashita + Kobayashi taught young children how to draw—a profoundly impressionable experience that enabled them to discern the beginnings of human ideation through bearing witness to the fact that many children had subconsciously drawn (or perhaps more accurately, could not help but draw) the sun in the corner of the paper. Buddhist teachings advocate that people’s suffering is caused by various “discriminations” between antagonistic dualities such as good and evil, superiority and inferiority, self and others, and that true peace of mind can only be attained by achieving "indiscriminate wisdom" of perceiving the world as one and whole.
The suns that children draw in the corner, can also be regarded as the sun that signifies worldmaking conceived through the nature of human beings that are unable lead a life free of discrimination and conceptualization.

–Arisa Jinno (Curator of Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art)

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND SCREENINGS (*)

2023 Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan (solo)