"What did you find in hell?"
2022. Do we feel like we're at war? No, we live today while thinking of a comic book-like reality.
Survive in these chaotic times by skipping. Feel it deeply, then forget it before you have a chance to pick it up.
In a world where life-wrecking destruction and plunder are unfolding just next to a glowing board, they laugh and dance in silence as if talking.
Before believing in politics, religion, philosophy, or love, believe strongly in yourself, and perceive and appreciate the happiness/unhappiness of each day more deeply.
We live in an age where our brains tremble at things that cannot be seen, where things that can be seen move at ever increasing speed, where details disappear, and even our natural colors, scents, and contours are in danger.
How are you all doing?
(Haruo)
Black and white psychedelic experiment
Haro was born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1983 and is currently based in Hiroshima, where he works as an artist, using collage and silkscreen printing techniques. He says that art was always around him, as he would frequently visit the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art from an early age, where a relative worked as a staff member. At the time, he was influenced by Shigeru Mizuki's manga Gegege no Kitaro. "I loved monsters, and I was influenced by the detailed expressions with many lines," he says. Haro's hobby was cutting out designs from history and art textbooks and filing them away, and this is where we can see the seeds of his current expression.
As a high school student, he became interested in psychedelic culture after picking up a collection of rock concert posters from the psychedelic movement that swept the world in the 1960s. He took time off from university to travel to England, where he witnessed the history of "Swinging London" and became engrossed in the chaotic expressions that stir people's imaginations.
"Creating something from nothing is a miracle. It's clearly different from expanding 1 to 2, 3, ... 10. But in my case, I find it interesting to expand 1 and think outside the box. The 'trip' of shifting your perspective and looking at things in different combinations is an important way of thinking in creative activities," he says. He sees psychedelic art as a yardstick for looking at things by shifting the axis of the existing value system.
In psychedelic art, which is characterized by images of vivid colors, Haro advocates "mono-psychedelic" which is expressed using only two colors, black and white. He believes that because "white contains all colors," different colors emerge depending on the viewer, and he continues to practice psychedelic art, which has been perfected in its simplicity, by considering its impact.
Thinking about the never ending war
"HELLO!!! BUSTERS!!!!!!!!!!" is a three-dimensional collage work that was released in response to the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, which gave the artist a sense of the eve of war. This is an interactive work in which visitors destroy a huge cubic collage work with the theme of "destruction and rebirth" at the exhibition venue and take it away from there. It was a participatory thought experiment that allowed visitors to physically relive the concept of war and reveal what people think. Now in 2022, when a pandemic has broken out and war has become a reality, this exhibition "HELL/Oh!" has even more strongly emphasized the theme of "rebirth." Ten new pieces, mainly two-dimensional works, will be on display.
Haruo witnesses how destruction becomes a goal, as a way of relieving stress, in this thought experiment. Humans also feel pleasure in destruction, and war is a way of releasing the human psyche that does not express itself in everyday life. He realizes that this is why war will never end.
This is also resonant with what Hannah Arendt wrote, horrified by the fact that the Nazi mass murders were carried out as administrative orders, when she wrote, "With each passing day it becomes clearer what a burden humanity is to man."
Questioning "Regeneration" rather than "Reconstruction"
Haro believes that war will never end, but he also thinks strongly about recovery from it. This is largely influenced by the fact that he was born and raised in Hiroshima. He attended elementary school close to the Atomic Bomb Dome, and people from all over the world gather there every day to think and reflect. What do they all believe and pray for there? What Hiroshima has left to the world becomes his identity as a writer.
"War is a man-made hell. Unfortunately, war never stops, no matter what the era. Those who survive burn their lives in that hell, building their futures one piece at a time with their own hands, and escaping from their miserable situations and achieving reconstruction. What will we find in that hell, and how will we regenerate it?"
The world has achieved such a recovery that it is hard to believe that war ever happened. However, there is also unhappiness that is hidden by the reality of the happiness of the recovery, and we are born and raised in a way that makes it difficult to accept the reality of war even when it occurs.
Outside of the everyday events that occur before our eyes, there is another perception. Psychedelic music is an exploration of this. Haro uses it to question the regeneration of a world in which "the brain trembles at the invisible" and "even the outlines are uncertain."
In addition to the two-dimensional works, this exhibition will feature "HELL/Oh!", a participatory work that allows visitors to "experience war" by destroying and looting large collages at the venue, just like "HELLO!!! BUSTERS!!!!!!!!!!". There will also be an interactive work called "C/U/T" (※1) where visitors can cut out the parts of the destroyed works they like and take them home, and a live screen corner (※2) where visitors can silkscreen print one-point designs on T-shirts and other items. Through these attempts, visitors will re-collage and expand Haro's worldview. Haro plans to be present every day during the exhibition, and he believes that through these efforts he will be able to talk to each and every visitor, and that the installation will be completed through this exchange.
A world where justice and evil alternate, where everything seems separate yet connected, but the next moment meaning and relationships are severed. Haro's collages, which juxtapose disparate qualities and logics using analog methods such as glue and cutting with scissors, make us intuitively realize that the world is a noisy entity that is constantly changing, and attempt to help us acquire a reality in which we live.
*1 The price varies depending on the size of the portion you take home. Prices start from 1,000 yen.
*2 Fee: 500 yen
