We are pleased to present "Painting Over," a solo exhibition by A-Mashiro.
A-Mashiro is an artist whose style is reminiscent of constructivism, combining circles, straight lines, and squares.
In recent years, he has been creating his works in digital format and presenting them as NFT. He has participated in exhibitions around the world and has attracted much attention.
In this exhibition, A-Mashiro presents his works as physical paintings, rather than in the digital format he has been focusing on.
After the major trend of NFT, please come and see the next part of A-Mashiro's exploration.

Statement

It was very natural for me to become aware of physical works again at this time.

In 2021, thanks to the NFT technology, my creative work had the opportunity to be known by people all over the world. The fact that so many people across borders were interested in my work was like a lightbulb moment for my previous creative endeavors.

Currently, I think the industry is looking for a new direction. Reading the X timeline, I feel that there are like-minded people all over the world.

I have always wanted to try my hand at physical expression again. However, this was not a return to the past, but rather a challenge to see what kind of things I could create after going digital. I did not want to choose one or the other, but rather to flexibly choose the means according to the expression.

Before starting production, I thought about physically reproducing what I had drawn digitally. However, when I started production, I felt uncomfortable with the idea of simply reproducing the work. It is natural that expression changes as tools change, and I thought it would be better to express myself by making the most of the material.

Color and composition are important elements of my work. They are not as obvious as in digital works, but they certainly play an important role in this work as well. In this work, I consciously used gold and silver colors, and the way they appear changes depending on the angle. In addition, the surface of the work is slightly three-dimensional due to multiple coats of paint. I believe these are things that cannot be reproduced digitally.

For this works, I used screen print to incorporate the Japanese patterns that characterize my work. The reason for this is that I wanted to put the patterns intuitively on my work, and I wanted to use the same patterns repeatedly throughout the series.

The title "Painting Over" is a phrase that expresses the part of the work that I myself felt most strongly about the difference between digital and physical works. As a matter of course, with digital, we can "save" and "redo" our work. We can completely pretend that the previous work never happened. However, with a physical work of art, this is not possible. Even if we wipe off the paint immediately, there will be traces of it. In this sense, I feel that the act of wiping off the paint itself is also painting over it. By painting over and over, the screen continues to change, but the traces of the past remain in layers. These common sense ideas are new to me, as I have become completely accustomed to creating digitally, and I was reminded of them all over again.

As I always say, I am not interested in taking the initiative to challenge art history, regardless of the method of expression. I just want to express what I think is beautiful and what makes me feel at home. And I hope that those who share my feelings will feel the same way when they see my work. It is a very personal feeling, but I believe it is a very fundamental and strong one.

A-Mashiro