Ryo HAMADA
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Views within Memories >>
Atsushi Sugita, Art Critic

It is wrapped within something resembling a white haze. This wrapped "something" is visible only to the extent that it provokes a tantalizing feeling. Then, that something which obstructs one's sight stealthily enters the depth of one's eye, perhaps even going deeper into the brain via the optic nerve. For this opaque something seems to adhere to the consciousness. After some time, however, a thought comes into the mind that the vulnerable looking silhouette may be something familiar. This thought then grows into a positive feeling that "it must be something I see all the time."
The term "visual perception" would normally signify some kind of lucidity. It would signify something in a specific scene, or convey something about a specific person. However, the visual perceptions that dominate Ryo Hamada's works are not connected to this kind of lucidity. Rather, her works give the impression that they aim to be positioned as far away as possible from such lucidity. Even though her works take a visual art form, they diffuse the viewer's sight while removing the objects to a place beyond a vague haze, which is normally visualized. Though her works seem to resist becoming visible, they stealthily visualize specific things. Moreover, they are objects that are familiar to us all.
Fragmental scenes and ambiguous expressions appear and disappear within our memories. The visual perceptions, as memories, accumulate high behind the visual perceptions we experience in real time. These visual perceptions have surprisingly low resolution, and lack details and focus. Hamada is aiming to manifest these types of scenes and portraits that exist in our distant memories. The scenes are further concealed beneath an ambiguous haze; the portraits are devoid of details in an almost irritable blur. The scenes and the expressions, which we are able to retrieve from our memories, can only lead to such views. The white haze in her works exposes the truth. The visual scenes are forgotten because of our strong adherence to real time visual perceptions; however, these scenes accumulate during every waking moment, are always referred to in our minds. It is undeniable that we do indeed live within these visual scenes.
(Translated by Taeko Nanpei)





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