Year: 2008-2009
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 227.3 x 162 cm (89 1/2 x 63 3/4 in.), combined 2 panels
Acquired from Tomio Koyama Gallery, 2022
In the 2000s, Yamamoto’s paintings gradually made a thicker application of paint on the surface, revealing a distinctive characteristic in which geometric compositions and organic motifs intertwine densely. In this work, the heavy painting in dark purple and dark brown tones is reminiscent of a forest at night. There are rotating flashes of light shining from the back of the painting. The landscape is divided into large sections by colorful straight lines that expand radially from the center. Although the landscape is contiguous, the color tones within each of the divided areas differ slightly. On the right side of the painting stands something resembling a collection of various organic forms. It looks like mushrooms or fairies, which often appear as Yamamoto’s motifs, yet it seems to be a transcendent being rather than something that can be named individually. How, then, should such paintings by Yamamoto be classified? They do not simply fall into the broad categories of figurative or abstract but have a self-contained intensity that denies all appropriate categories. This work was exhibited at the “Nostalgia and Fantasy: Imagination and Its Origins in Contemporary Art” exhibition at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, in 2014, along with “Transfer and Reverse of Whirlpool Princess” from this collection. If one were to apply the term “nostalgia & fantasy” to this product of unusual imagination, it might be more aptly paraphrased as something closer to eccentricity – or even madness.
