Year: 2022
Medium: spray, resin, acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 100 x 80.3 cm (39 3/8 x 31 5/8 in.)
Acquired from Tomio Koyama Gallery, 2022
The “painting” is rolling up as if gliding across a jet-black mirror surface. It is a sight that leaves a powerful sense of strangeness. The black mirror surface is, in fact, a resin plate. Layers of acrylic have been applied over it, followed by letters and colors rendered in spray paint. From a technical viewpoint of painting instead of drawing, it would be considered taboo to use lacquer paint like spray paint over acrylic paint. This is because lacquer contains highly volatile solvents that dissolve the underlying acrylic paint. Yuno, however, turns this taboo into a creative device. By digging out the floated acrylic paint film, the tranquil black mirror surface is being revealed. Its color contrast with the gorgeous spray paint is intense. This work functions as an actual mirror, reflecting the viewer’s appearance standing in front of it, and sending back the gaze that should have been directed toward the work. Unknowingly, the subject of the viewer’s gaze has been replaced by his or her own image instead of the work. The Baroque master, Caravaggio, has painted a work which reminds the viewer of a scene from the myth of Narcissus, who loses his life because he was obsessed with his own reflection in a jet-black water mirror, and is transformed into a single flower (a narcissus, not a camellia).
