infinity~mirage
2021/2023- Live video streaming, m-shaped signboard installed on Ikuji coastal embankment(230×1410 ㎝), acrylic on canvas (31.8×41cm), text Dimension variable
"We (and perhaps you too) had a misconception about a mirage, thinking it is a strange event in which a scene that shouldn't exist suddenly appears. In fact, it is a scientific phenomenon in which light curves as it passes between cooler and warmer air, causing a distant scene to appear to flip up or down.
On the Ikuji coast of Kurobe, famous for its mirages, we will install a sign shaped like a large m. We are hoping that the mercurial mirages will cause a large ∞ to appear, but we have no idea what will actually happen. Incidentally, the surface of the water in the video is also an 'apparent water surface,' which is supposed to be hidden due to the roundness of the earth, but is visible because of the refraction of light by the atmosphere.
Despite hearing increasingly that we live in an age of uncertainty, we wonder whether the world we see has always been as uncertain and 'apparent' as a mirage. "
(From the exhibition text)
“infinity~mirage” is an outdoor project produced for Yamashita + Kobayashi’s solo exhibition “A mirage.”, held at Kurobe City Art Museum, Toyama Prefecture, in 2021. A gigantic signboard in the shape of an “m” measuring 14.1 meters wide by 2.3 meters high was installed along the coastal embankment of Ikuji in Kurobe City, which is famous nationwide for its mirage sightings. The artists attempted to make the “∞” symbol emerge through means of the inferior mirage effect that is often observed in the area from autumn to winter, which causes the reverse image of the “m” to appear below the actual signboard itself.
The video taken through a super-telephotographic camera in Uozu, 8 km away from Ikuji, is constantly streamed live on the internet. Faced with a natural phenomenon of a mirage which may appear at any time, viewers, while feeling a sense of anxiety and anticipation, are encouraged to enjoy the "uncertainty" that also permeates this exhibition. In other words, the work could be described as a collaboration between humans and a natural phenomenon.
2024 Bangkok Art Biennale 2024 Nurture Gaia, BACC, Thailand
2023 Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan (solo)
2021 Kurobe City Museum of Art, Toyama, Japan (solo)