TAB Event - project N23 Taro Morimoto Exhibition

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At Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
Media: Illustration, Painting

Flowers that blossom all over the canvas, and daringly trimmed characters. These motifs have been dissolved almost up to the level of non-recognition. Almost, because we can still see what they are, planted in the mosaic-like chain of colours. The canvas is protected from colours eroding against each other by simple lines built amdist the sea of colours. These thick dams have been raised up from the canvas, and seem to protect the motifs from dissolving even further. These motifs aren't based on real flowers or people, Morimoto gets them from existing material like newspaper foldouts, things that have been created already and surround us everywhere we go. These pictures were once taken somewhere and by someone, but by trimming them, completely changing their colour-balance, tweaking them...they gradually lose their originality. This process is also one of re-editing and adding new meaning to the image. The image we get to see is not the original; there has been serious adding, subtracting, and mutation by the hands of 'others'.
That in Morimoto's paintings the mutation of the image and the interference of an 'other' are main themes is clear, but that mutation is even pursued during the process of canvas composition by the artist himself. Having loaded the selected images, Morimoto uses an automatic selection tool to choose the range for motif colour, and ultimately the outlook of the whole canvas. In addition to this, he will randomly click on one dot within that range, and use the colour of that dot to fill the whole range. All this using the same automatic selection tool. The result is that the range turns into a single-coloured block without any contrasting density. This procedure is applied to the whole canvas, and transforms it into a blocked mosaic.
Nowadays, artist that use the computer when deciding composition aren't rare. Morimoto is one of them. But what makes him different from his colleagues is that he doesn't think of the computer as a being that actualises the artist's artistic thoughts. To Morimoto, the computer possesses a cooperative independence, and isn't just a tool that faithfully reflects the artist's thinking on the screen.
'Mosaicing' is almost like a jazz session: an ad-lib duet. It is about mutating the image through proactive reception from external interference, instead of just sticking to subjective self-expression. Or, as Morimoto himself states: "I enjoy the unforeseeability of the result." This might sound like an abandonment of artistic identity, but seen from the perspective that the act of creation itself is the expression of artistic thinking, the receptive stance towards an external entity on its own is a decisive factor of this artist's originality.
The actual drawing on canvas, though, is far from impromptu, and is performed systematically. Take the raised edges for example; they form the aforementioned blocks and are made from a home-made mixture. These edges are a way of stating "I won't mutate this image anymore". The canvas, which was construed with delicate application of acryl and oil paint has been, is finally ridded even delicately of traces and relief, as though the artist never really interfered in the texture of the blocks. While this gentle flatness is in concert with graphic nature of the image, the thick contours accentuate the structure. This layered effect is a visualization of Morimoto's artistic identity: a stereospatial surface versus an image without any depth, flexibility in incorporating external elements versus hard-and-fast unyieldingness, original versus copy,...these dualities are both answer and question to the conventions of the genre. By that, Morimoto proves he is exploring the possibilities of expression.

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