Year: 2014
Medium: oil, conte on canvas
Dimensions: 227.5 x 324 cm (89 1/2 x 127 1/2 in.)
Acquired from Tomio Koyama Gallery, 2022
This is a large-scale work composed of two F150 canvases joined together. Its center, which is the seam of the two canvases, acts as an axis, making the composition roughly axisymmetric. The majority of the painting is rendered abstractly. Slightly above the center, there is a dark brown circle with a colorful scattering of lines expanding outward radially and snake eye-like circular depictions. Along the seam, however, a slender organic form extends vertically. If one follows it with one's eyes, a face can be recognized in the decorative depiction. It then becomes clear that the entire painting depicts a figure resembling a butterfly with its wings fully spread. As the title suggests, this work is “reversed” like a mirror on both the left and right sides of the symmetric axis, and they seem to “transfer” each other. While the “Princess” is drawn in such a way that it overlaps the axis of linear symmetry in two dimensions, reinterpreted three-dimensionally, the axis of symmetry can be recomposed into an axis of rotation with the “Princess” at the center. Like a galaxy formed around a star, it appears as if the world surrounding the “Princess” herself is being swept up into the vortex. This work was introduced as a representative example of Yamamoto’s work in the exhibition “Nostalgia and Fantasy: Imagination and Its Origins in Contemporary Art” held at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, in 2014.
