山崎 雅未
Mami YAMASAKI
Statement
I paint the lights of the city at night. Light is not just a material thing, I try to paint something like hope every day. I feel that when the viewer looks at my paintings, they are facing themselves in the painting while looking at the painting, and they are going back to the past. Hope is like the viewer’s happy memories from the past. It is remembered as a memory color that is more vivid than the actual color.
Cities are places where many people come and go and various emotions intersect, and they contain not only fun and happy things, but also emotions such as sadness and hatred. I feel that darkness contains many things and that unknown things are wriggling. I feel like there is a monster hiding there that has eaten a lot of negative emotions.
At first, I painted cities because they are beautiful with light gathering there. The light is the moonlight and the lights of the city. At the same time, I felt that something was beautiful and something was lurking in the darkness, which was frightening. I want to expose and find that something. I am in the middle of a journey.
Cities are somewhat similar in some ways. I want viewers to look at pictures of cities they have never been to and recall the similarities between them and cities they know, and feel nostalgic.
Process / Methods
I express the city lights in an abstract way using squeegees and painting knives. My paintings look like a city from a distance, but when you get closer to them, they look abstract. At the same time, I express something mysterious lurking in the darkness on the screen using random expressions. It changes the appearance of the work into what the viewer wants to see, like a Rorschach test.
In the final process of my work, I cut up the finished work and destroy it. By doing so, the distance of the work as a concrete object becomes more distant and it becomes more abstract.
(The “Rorschach test” is a test that shows the subject an ink stain and analyzes their explanation of “what it reminds them of” in order to estimate personality and mental disorders.)
Generative series
Generative series: I use Generative AI to create my works using images generated by Generative AI.