From the series "Cherry Blossoms" The inspiration came not from the traditional mountain cherry tree, which has appeared in songs and literature since ancient times, but from the "clonal" nature of the Someiyoshino, which was developed in the Edo period and exploded in popularity after the Meiji period. Not the cherry tree as a single tree, a single life, but a group as a phenomenon that constitutes space. Or a non-living sequence. I was attracted to a certain kind of snarl that "cherry blossoms" possess. It is a way of being that is different from the "individual," which is a life, but has spatial and temporal delimitations. The vague expanse of color that the individual seems to sink into resembles the abyss that lurks behind existence, which I have been exploring in my own work. What I want to formulate in this series of works is an experience of time and space that shakes the boundaries of my own existence, similar to Pascal's expression. Often when I am viewing cherry blossoms, I feel as if my sense of existence and space-time is distorted. Perhaps we are evoked by cultural memories and feel a sense of dizziness. Or perhaps we experience the melting of individual boundaries as the cherry tree in front of us rises not as a single tree but as a group of clones. In any case, what the cherry blossoms bring is a sense of pluralistic and non-living repetition and fusion, not the monotonous time of birth and death or the contours of individual existence.
