鳥野見知高 / Tomotaka Torinomi

Born in Tokyo, 2000
Entered Tokyo University of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Painting, Oil Painting Major in 2019

Two-person exhibition with Kengo Nagayama at TOBARIER GALLERY, August 2020

Solo exhibition at AKAI Factory GALLERY, December 2020

Group exhibition "SEPT," organized and curated, April 2021

Group exhibition "ONTHERIVER," organized and curated, September 2021

Exhibition "SONOATODE," organized and curated, October 2021

Creating art might be akin to concealing the truth.

In appreciation, the actual presence of the artwork is minor. More often, it's their absence, an illusion that we engage with. Inevitably, when we try to see something, other things enter our field of vision as well—our own hair or hands, other people, the air, the canvas, the paint, dust, walls, light, shadows. In exhibitions without defined boundaries, the choice of what to look at is always left to you. You can also choose not to look (something I'd like to describe more someday).

The beginning of seeing is where choices determine fate. "Impressions" are events confirmed post-factum. This recollection, this affirmation, cannot happen without words. Someone must observe and form it—how it was at that time. By testifying through words, we can affirm its existence in historical time, asserting its right to be there.

We overlap the artwork and the artist, and often the observer too (who might be the artist themselves). We layer everything to first confirm whether the observer is aligned in the same temporal direction. If not, that's also acceptable.

Only then can we attempt to see, to empathize.

From the phrase "The bells of Gion Shoja temples echo the impermanence of all things," what should we discern? Physically, the bell rings as it always does. However, it sounds different at different times because humans are constantly changing. The bell sounds different depending on the listener's mood.

"The flow of the river is ceaseless, and yet the water is never the same," although the river is there and it is the same information, the water that makes up the river changes every time you look at it. (Excerpt from "The Fool's Wall" by Moriji Yoro).

I am reading the "beauty" (art) within myself.

Moreover, the beginning of seeing might not lie within the "impression" but within the "words" that posthumously construct it, because without being reconstructed by words, confirmation of its existence is impossible.

Any artwork must have a line of division between impressions before and after words; otherwise, beauty will pass unnoticed. When one tries to recall an artwork, they empathize with the artwork in their memory. This is a question of recollection and perception. "Beauty" is an emotion perceived, and "beauty" is realized through "words." If there is beauty unknown to others, it must somehow make itself known without informing others. By recognizing beauty, it is preserved. People reminisce about what they saw yesterday, narrate to themselves, and ruminate, thus initiating "beauty." "Beauty" is born in the recollections of the future and dwells in memory. Unknowingly, being known by people is the ideal state of "beauty."

(References: "On Love - Proust, Duras, and others" by Kazunari Suzumura, "The Religion of Art and Symbols" by Mircea Eliade)

How enjoyable it would be to draw while traveling. As a child, I thought about this with a pencil case in hand, wishing to go somewhere, anywhere. If only I could.

When I saw the sea at night, the vast valleys, I wanted to paint them. Trying to recall them repeatedly, I realized they had become more beautiful than in my previous memories. Gradually, I understood what I had been looking at, what I had been trying to see. The shapes painted on the canvas were the landscapes I had seen.