Art works are fictional. Actors playing evil characters are not evil men in reality and novelists who write about adulteries or murders don't commit such in real life.

There are techniques and technologies to make the fiction looks/sounds real. When the play is poorly acted, you can't get the bad performance off of your mind. Images can be created, by editing, to make people accept the fact differently.

To draw realistically, to make it look like a photograph, is just one of those techniques. It's like carving wood or taking photographs or making prints and it doesn't mean I'm trying to master the realistic drawing. It's like keep polishing carefully when you want to make smooth curves.

A motif is only one of those elements that make up the fiction. When the painting is photographic and realistic, it might be natural for people who see it to be interested in its motif and the technique.

Painting is one of the means to make the fiction called artwork possible. My first "contemporary art" work after I stopped drawing Japanese painting was three-dimensional. So when other people introduce me as a "painter," I feel uncomfortable. Since I plan to show three or four paintings, about 2-meters high, at this exhibition, being called a painter can't be helped, I suppose.

- Matsuyama Ken

Artist Talk
5 p.m. – 7 p.m. on Saturday, November 6
Seishi Uchiumi (painter) × Kengo Nakamura (artist) × Matsuyama Ken