Hisaharu Motoda : CARS talk with the artist

Motoda: I have been drawing the ruins series since 2004, to shift to minicar as the motif since two years ago. Minicar was more familiar with me than before where I spent longer at home, playing with my five- year-old son. I was inspired with the aspect of "fiction" as minicar to make it realize in real landscape. That was the opposite process of ruins, which was the fictionalization of the real landscape. I was curious to know how it become in the context of the reality, and that was my first step to deal with minicar.

CARS: Pedestrian Crossing 2022 panel, linen, mixed media

M: These two vector between reality and fiction motivated me to embark on the production. The first piece was the lithograph work in another room. For the next step, I wanted to create a painting with not the minicar as fiction but minicar as minicar, since the scale was totally different between the real crossing and the minicars. The white line and the crossing in life size, together with the cut-out of the minicar in life size as well, enables us to grasp the whole painting. In other words, the artwork should have looked less understandable without the white lines helping our sense of scale.

Foresight : Hakozaki JCT 20109 lithograph 8/10 image size: 690 x 930 frame size: 910 x 1145 x 38mm

G: You often mention that you are drawing reality to represent the fictional world. In fact, the ruin series are often from the "perspective of the God" while this time the perspective is like that from drone. How did you come to change a little bit the scale or viewpoint?

M: Surely this making process is new to me. While the ruin series were with the perspective of ordinary painting, the minicars are all viewed from above. They overlap each other, but always viewed from the perspective of drone, which is familiar with the people's experience today.

G: Diamond mark shows the very unique proportion of elongated rhombus. Why is this such proportion?
M: This piece is totally different in the composition of the minicars in order. It is derivative of the lithograph with the ordered position of minicars. In the Pedestriaan Crossing, the image I conceived was changing from order to disorder.

CARS: White Line 2022 Japanese paper, panel, mixed media

G :　Was it a kind of story from order toward disorder, or a judgement respecting the aesthetic structure?
M: Yes, making of prints start with the clear image of the finished form of the work, to which I move forward. In contrast, these paintings were in the plastic stage without any vision. For example, the composition of panels were first of three panels. I realized then, in course of creation, it is not large enough to cover the whole image, so I added gradually the panels to represent the whole image.
In addition, you recognize the shadow in the upper part of the picture, contrasted with the high light in the center of the plane. It took me fairly time to reach this solution where minicars are associated with living creatures.
In "White line" too, the fictional aspect was strengthened by the white line.

Indication: Tokyo Station 2007 lithograph, ink, framed edition: a.p. image size: 850 x 1713, frame size: 1198 x 2040mm

G: In addition, some colors are recognized here. Are you conscious of using "pop" colors?
M: In the ruin series, for example, I used symbolic red color in the work of Tokyo station. In the series of CARS, I apply some artificial color for the fictional object of the toy of minicar.　In the frame of total composition, wider color range are applied than before.

CARS: Manhole 2022 Japanese paper, mixed media 930 x 700 x 35

G: The work of Manhole allows several interpretation.
M: There are manholes in number at our University. This is also in life size, applied on Japanese paper for it seems to similar to the textrure of the roads. The paper for minicar lithograph has also variety, such as Origami, oil paper or wrapping paper and so on. These cut-outs of minicars shed shadow of themselves, since they are pasted on the paper with some depth in collage.

In playing with my son, I could enlarge the possibilities of prints with various materials, pursuing what the prints can do, and not what I can do with prints to enrich my picture plane.

The exhibit is through July 17.　　　The artist is in the gallery on July 13 （12－17h）.
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