About this work
Within a gold square, a circular dark waterscape opens. Against black and indigo, white bubbles float in masses, and a run of cells divided by fine lines gathers at the centre. A pink coral form and a single shell sink into the dark. [About the work] Origin is a series in which Kan Kaoru takes the deep sea as her subject, and also the title of the collection published after her 2019 solo exhibition "Light and Sea" (Chosei-in and Gallery PARC). This work belongs to that line, looking not at the surface of water but at its floor. [On the motif] Of the deep sea Kan says, "I think life came up from the bottom of the sea — that there is a source from which the force of living things, of life itself, is born, and I wanted to express something just being born, or in the middle of taking shape." The white masses in the picture are not particular organisms but things not yet fully formed. Shells and coral come from those she has picked up on the shore or collected in shops, and she notes that "the long extending curves in fact come from the streamlined patterns of shells". [Materials and technique] Natural mineral pigments and metal leaf on kumohada hemp paper. Leaf is laid outside the circle, answering the dark water within. The white bubbles are countless grains of gofun, larger and smaller, gathering into masses. Using the way pigments settle at different levels according to particle size, indigo and black show through beneath the layers of bubbles. [What to look for] Note the run of fine cells at the centre. Each is bounded by its own contour, and the density is highest there. The subject — life just before it takes form — is concentrated in that passage.
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