Michiko Itatani: Infinite Remnant

September 27, 2003 - January 25, 2004 Free Admission

”For the solo exhibition at the Daum Museum, I am choosing mainly large scale paintings and installation work from the last several years. Although the appearance of my work has been changing considerably over the years, the basic concerns have been quite consistent. In my youth, I wanted to pursue writing fiction. Though my main medium has been in the visual arts for the past 30 years, I am still dealing with the idea of fiction. I strongly believe in fiction’s ability to express the deepest truths.
Using a fictional and symbolic space, in which I condense experienced and imagined multilayered events, I am examining the issues of the human body and the cosmos, flesh and technology, the individual and the State, desire and choice, taboo and obsession. Titles of some of the works are: Hyperspace, Interspace Studies, Proving Field, Infinite Remnant, Sympathetic Vibration, Virtual Landing, Waiting Game-Echo, Viable Elevation. I hope the very titles themselves reveal some of my concerns in contemporary life: linguistic texts, layers of meanings, nuances and ambiguities.
My process of art-making starts with gathering various fragments from experiences, events, documents, literature, history, science, myths, customs and so on. I catalogue those fragments, mutate them, make images, and let them interact with each other. It is an act of fusing research, observation, memory and imagination. And I further intervene into the fragments and consider manifold possibilities, though none of the possibilities is conclusive. My painting is a painted diagram of some of the possibilities. It is my fiction writing. It is incomplete, fragmented and under inquiry.”
Michiko Itatani
September 2002