Year: 2023
Medium: acrylic, pencil, grease pencil on paper
Dimensions: 106.7 x 81.3 cm (42 x 32 in.)
Acquired from Misako & Rosen, 2023
Hiro takes his own body as the starting point of his works and his own body undeniably identifies his existence. However, he cannot directly see his own back with his own eyes. In Hiro’s works, he expresses a body that should exist there but cannot be recognized. In drawings such as this work, they are created by laying his own body directly on paper. In similar works, the starting point of the drawing corresponds to a part of his own body (nipple, genitals, etc.). The meaning of using his own works as the starting point precisely lies in the direct correlation between the work and Hiro’s body. In this work, like others, the picture plane is created by a gradual symmetric form. Even though there are differences in human bodies, they are still generally symmetrical in shape. This work may seem abstract at first glance, but it is an extremely figurative image of Naotaka Hiro’s body. He imagines his body parts that are invisible to his eyes and even if they are visible, he shapes the work through sensibility without trusting his sense of sight. In the process of human development, people gradually acquire a body image from childhood and understand the approximate structure of their own body without seeing it. In other words, the strong interests people pay in the bodies of others, our bodies, are the closest in our daily lives. The strong interest shown here is akin to the fear of forgetting about one’s own body as the most certain existence, or the fact that there are unknown territories exist inside.
