Art born from everyday life
Strong brush strokes and thickly applied paint. Saccharani Love is a painter who freely releases his sensibility and creates abstract paintings with an automatistic technique in which even the artist himself cannot predict the final form. His solo exhibition "Life" believes that artworks are born from the simple life spent with family and friends. Approximately 10 paintings will be on display, including a 150-size piece that he has never attempted before.
In addition to abstract expressionism, Ai Saccharani has also undertaken numerous commissioned works, including delicate sketches that expand the viewer's imagination like illustrations in picture books, and pop illustrations that are reminiscent of homages to anime works. She was born in Tokyo in 1987. With diverse roots in the UK, India, and Okinawa, she grew up in an ever-changing environment, receiving her education at both an international school and a Japanese public school.
"Humans live their lives with information stored in their bodies, including the region and climate in which they were born and raised, the people they meet, and the genes they inherit."
Influenced by his father, whose hobby was oil painting, Saccharani became familiar with painting from an early age, and would often climb alone onto the roof of his house, which was on a hill, to paint pictures of the view from there. The wind, the scent of the trees, the cityscape, and the words and time exchanged with his family. These diverse overlapping scenes, which cannot be understood simply by looking at them, become memories and shape the human mind and body. It is Saccharani's belief that beautiful art is created by living our irreplaceable daily lives.
Drawing with sensory thinking
"Flowers are alive and have their own circumstances. In the same way, paints and supports have their own circumstances and structures. Rather than fitting them into my own ideas, I express myself by mixing them so that they influence each other well. Creation is a dialogue between the artist and the work, and it's like a phenomenon in which both change."
For example, in "2021.No.14 Dream of Rotating Fetus," a world is unfolded in which a background reminiscent of the vast space of a galaxy and static objects of pale colored surfaces are contrasted with dynamic objects such as paint splatters, colored spots that resemble flowers, and scrapings that give a sense of flesh, and pixel patterns that emerge from a bug in a computer are depicted.
Saccharani says that he is where he is today thanks to the many things and people around him throughout his life. He says that "an artist and a work of art are the manifestation of life itself," and viewers will feel a synchronicity with their own lives in his abstract works, which seem to capture the various colors that pass through his body and release them into a four-dimensional world far removed from the earth, and will be immersed in them, as if jumping into the picture plane.
Creating Being and Accepting Being
Abstract Expressionism, represented by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, became popular from after World War II through the 1950s. Regarding the free-spirited works that were born in America, a place with neither the traditions nor history of Europe, during a time of economic prosperity, Saccharani says, "It feels like they're telling me to just bring out everything I have."
"2023.No.4" is a two-part work consisting of F100-size sheets that were exhibited at the art space "YOTSUYA ART DROPS" in Yotsuya, Tokyo in March this year. The circular pixels overflow from the screen with a vitality that could be called a swell of natural energy, and are shown to be like the sparkle of the surface of water or a barrier to reality. While being aware of the fulfillment and maturity of his recent works, which are truly lively, he will work on an even larger scale in order to create "powerful" works that eliminate technical and artificial elements.
"The beauty of the sea or the moon. It's not that meaning precedes it, it just exists. If you try to assign meaning to the beauty of that existence, it will no longer be natural. I just want to be able to create existence."
The vast canvas has such a presence that it can be considered a work of art even when nothing is painted on it. When were we born, who did we meet, what words did we exchange, where are we going? Saccharani finds positive meaning in the coincidences of life. An expression of love. Just as he used to look at the scenery from the roof of his house, he accepts all existence as it is and releases it.