笠原 出

人の一過性の感情表出の一つである「笑い」その複雑な層を切り口に作品を通じて問いかけ展開しています。初期の心理学的な面でのアプローチから近年は神話などを通じ、民俗学的視点におけるアニミスティックな「笑い」のあり方を探究しています。近作「ふわりんぼ」（Fluffy Limbo）シリーズは「現世」（うつしよ）と「常世」（とこよ）の間（Limbo）にふわふわ（Fluffy）存在するもの、ライプニッツのモナドや素数のように無限に現れては消える「笑う霊素」として還元し、金属箔で現出させてみました。

Laughter/smiling is one of the passing expressions of human emotion. I explore it and develop my art through works that delve into its complicated layers. In my early output, I approached the subject from the psychological aspect. In recent years, however, I have been researching the shape of animistic "laughter" from the folklore perspective, through studies of myths and other areas.


My recent Fluffy Limbo series is concerned with the fluffy entities existing in the limbo between utsushiyo (this transient world) and tokoyo (the eternal, unchanging one). I have reduced these to "laughing reiso" that endlessly appear and disappear, like Leibniz's monads and primary numbers. (Literally translating "spirit-element," the term reiso is a coinage indicating something fundamental and indivisible, like chemical elements and prime numbers.) I tried depicting them with metallic leaf instead of pigment. Lately, I have been not only working in oil paints but also exploring depiction with watercolors. - Izuru Kasahara