Kousai Shiraishi Solo Exhibition “The Room and Ghost”
Born in Korea and spending several decades there, I often flew to my maternal grandparents' house in Nagano: small houses lined up at the foot of the mountain, with the mountain surrounding the horizon. The lights from various summer night stalls, the snow that covered the low houses in winter. The scenery was different from Korea, and while I was in Japan, I felt as though my body floated, my feet never truly touching the ground. In Hayao Miyazaki's anime, characters pass through tunnels to enter another world. The feeling of traveling back and forth between Korea and Japan, as well as the sensation of consciousness flowing from the present to the past, felt like passing through a tunnel to another world.
When I outline the shape of a tangible object on the canvas, I can vividly imagine how I want to depict its texture and feel. Then the place and time come after. Memories flow like a chain to form paintings. The images from a fog alternate between me and the canvas, becoming more decorative. Occasionally, I wonder if the essence of my true self, is not in physical form but in memory. These memories seem to stand like a ghost, emitting a faint light in the rectangular room of the canvas.
Kosai Shiraishi
