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ASAI Kyoto Shijo,Japan
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Feathered robe for angel
2024
アルミ複合板にアクリル、顔料ペン、樹脂、ラメ粉
Acrylic,Pigment-ink,Resin,Glitter-powder on Aluminium Composite Panel
200cm × 40cm
- About the work -
日本語
The picture entitled “Feathered robe for angel”, which was painted for ASAI KYOTO SHIJO, a Thai hotel in Kyoto City, was inspired by a Japanese legend about Ama-no-Hagoromo, or the robe of a celestial nymph. Wearing the robe, the heavenly maiden can fly about the cosmos. The robe also has a symbolic function of connecting things of a different nature such as heaven and earth, the sacred and the profane. Centring on the celestial raiment, stories of a man and a heavenly maiden, a man and a woman, meeting and parting are generically called the Hagoromo legend, which is not only familiar to the Japanese people but is also found in various places in the world.
“ASAI” is a Thai word meaning “to live with local people”, while “Dusit”, the operating body, means “Heaven” in Thai.
ASAI Kyoto Shijo, the hotel founded on the blending of Thai and Kyoto cultures, is a meeting point where guests from all over the world can encounter and mingle with each other. It aims to offer fresh and interesting experiences to the guests.
Working on the picture, Tarutani also hoped that the hotel, instead of being
a place where people just pass each other, would be a space in which people
of different cultures and beliefs come together to produce new chemical reactions
such as resonance and emotion. Furthermore, it would be a place
where a beautiful thing is daily engraved in each person’s memory.
In order to paint the picture, Tarutani first photographed Kyoto scenes including forests, mountains, plants, temples, shrines, the sky, and rivers. Materials were also collected concerning Thai culture. Then the layers of collected images were superimposed at random and drawn on the metal plate. Furthermore, they were painted with glittering lamé and small grains like multiplying cells. Finally, it was cut out along the drawn outline with a fret saw.
The prototype of the present work was painted in 2016, so this is the work of the second generation. It was through the combination of the first generation and the idea of this hotel that Ama-no-Hagoromo as the new symbol of ASAI Kyoto Shijo was born.
By way of conclusion, let us quote the passage Tarutani wrote for the first generation Ama-no-Hagoromo in 2016.
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The feathered robe knows best. It becomes a clear stream when it is hot, a flame when it is cold, a tree when we want nectar, a beacon when the tree burns. The heavenly maiden’s flowing locks changes into the devil’s vomit. A resonance between man and woman transmutes itself into the changing seasons. Is the painting abstract or objective, plane or cubic, reality or fantasy, an individual or the whole?
I want it to be both an individual and the whole, negative and positive. What kind of a work will it be, which is just like me?
Zen pictures were one of my ideals. But I wanted to express a different kind of airy grace. Zen pictures are colourful in a simple colour, eloquent in silence. I tried to reverse it, and to develop my free fantasy. It would be a simple colour in many colours, silence in talkativeness. The repetition of daily life. An unexpected encounter with a wayside stone. In a similar vein, dreams and fantasies are events that really happen to me. Everything flows on, but each foam, or each grain, remains a precious being. All of them come to fruition in myself. They are woven into a feathered robe, which flies over its own being. It recalls the words of Dogen:
Water is clear and penetrates the earth. A fish swims like a fish.
The sky is open and clear. A bird flies like a bird.
―Tomoaki Tarutani
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