About this work
A cosmic expanse of black and gold across a two-panel folding screen. White circles of varying size float and are linked by fine lines into a mesh. On the left panel a gold and rose eddy flows; on the right, white spheres crowd together like a galaxy. [About the work] A subject continuing from the 2014 solo exhibition "Across the Universe" (Gallery PARC), developed here as a two-panel screen. That exhibition set a sixteen-panel double-sided screen fourteen metres long across the space, to be viewed under changing artificial and natural light. This work too assumes that its appearance will change with the light of the place where it stands. [On the motif] Kan says, "When I paint water I feel myself connecting with something cosmic. When you magnify a part of a small world you come to feel that everything large is contained in what is small." That bubbles of water and clusters of stars are drawn in the same form rests on this feeling. She has also cited the idea that "ancient people held that the bottom of the sea and the sky were connected", and a view that treats water and cosmos as continuous runs through the picture. [Materials and technique] Natural mineral pigments and metal leaf on kumohada hemp paper. The white circles are laid thickly in gofun, repeated in varying size and density. The fine lines linking them are drawn in white, reading as a network structure from a distance. The gold ground is leaf, with dark pigment laid over it so that the gold appears to seep out from beneath. [What to look for] Because the two panels stand at an angle, passages appear that cannot be seen head-on. As Kan puts it, "the abundant curves nature produces and its lawful straight lines are alike enfolded within one organic world" — and here the eddy of curves and the mesh of straight lines share the same picture.
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