portfolio_20260128(JP)

portfolio_20260128(ENG)

This artwork, “Saenghwal Gadeuk,” expresses reflections on the “fluctuation of value.” The everyday goods and food packages displayed on the wall were acquired by me during my stay in Gwangju, South Korea. These items, functionally, are quite similar to those easily obtainable in Japan if one doesn’t focus on the manufacturer, meaning their functional value is nearly identical. However, due to the minimal difference in the printed text or characters, they became special objects that I deemed “worth owning.” This “condition of value” is constantly unstable; I might have discarded these same items had I been in Japan. Value is not absolute; it fluctuates dynamically based on the place and circumstances of acquisition, or in the case of a gift, the relationship and time associated with the object. By also incorporating photographs taken in Gwangju during my stay alongside these everyday items, the artwork attempts to reconstruct their inherent value into something even more “valuable,” strongly connecting it with my personal experience. The title, “Saenghwal Gadeuk,” is taken from the text printed on a paper cup I acquired on my first day in Korea. When I asked for the meaning of the phrase, I was told it “doesn’t have any particular meaning.” This phrase, for which a clear answer could not be obtained despite pursuing its meaning, attempts to settle within the work the ambiguity at the border of language and culture, and the very sense of everyday life that is, nonetheless, “full of life.

Waves occur repeatedly, but no wave is ever the same. Waving a hand is also called a “wave,” and the way it repeatedly disappears seems like a repeated farewell. Since I used an Instax camera for the photography, only one record of the wave remains on an unreplicable medium. Although it is a repetition of similar things, I believe that facing each one allows us to cherish fleeting moment.