Yuji Shimono

I create works such as objects, mainly paintings using iron rust.

With the invention of photography, each person shared the scenery they saw, and the world captured in photographs became a common landscape.

I think everyone had a different view of the world where photography was invented.

For example, Van Gogh may have seen it as if Van Gogh had drawn a picture that looked like a burning tree, but now that there are photographs, the photographs prove that the scenery Van Gogh saw was a landscape that normal people could not see. Before photography was invented, people saw different scenes even with the same scenery, and I think people's emotions sometimes influenced the scenery they saw.

While selecting motifs from my past memories and reconfirming them, I feel that the primitives felt from iron rust are connected to the Wabi Sabi culture that has existed in Japan since ancient times, and I am creating iron rust thinking that it is the greatest tool that can express human emotions.

Also, I create works using photographs and animation as motifs, and these are things I experienced a long time ago, and they remain in one corner of my head until now, and they are living in me now in a form different from what I first experienced. That kind of thing leads to primitive art that continues from Neanderthals, and I think it's my primitive art living in the present.