Pressing on the Ears, the Voices of Frogs Urge Its Awakening
I visited the three-person exhibition “Pressing on the Ears, the Voices of Frogs Urge Its Awakening,” organized by Mina Akagi. The venue was “Art Space Ginza One.”
Upon entering the venue, the first work you encounter is the piece that shares the exhibition’s title, “Pressing on the Ears, the Voices of Frogs Urge Its Awakening.” It is a three-dimensional work with a splendidly complex form and deep hues. Though it has movement and appears unstable, it holds its balance beautifully.
Amid the predominance of relatively dark tones, on the opposite wall from the entrance was a work employing a bright palette and a circular canvas. It was, apparently, a piece she pushed to complete right up until the eve of the solo exhibition.
Three-Person Exhibition
This time the show was organized by three artists who came together at Mina Akagi’s invitation. Their connection began through Twitter, and their individual worlds overlap to create a dense, richly layered atmosphere. Together with the heat of the steady stream of visitors arriving one after another, the gallery seemed suffused with warmth.
Mina Akagi
I spoke with the artist Mina Akagi.
Mina Akagi is a young artist, currently 24 years old, born in Ehime Prefecture and based in Osaka. She did not attend art school and has continued to develop her work through self-study. Her artist career spans about five years, but although self-taught, she has been drawing since the age of three, and driven by voracious curiosity, she has absorbed a vast amount of input from a wide range of artworks.
The core of her work would generally be classified as detailed miniature painting, yet examining the originals closely reveals the distinctive tactile quality of the matière, which leaves a deep impression.
The paint’s thickness varies across the canvas, and the colors, which respond to light, produce a striking sense of depth.
Works
The work that left the strongest impression was “A Sea That Can Only Be Reached From Inside the Closet.”
As a child she loved playing inside a closet, and even though the sea was nearby, she would imagine it from within that enclosed space. The sea’s shifting appearances depending on how it is viewed are expressed here—some passages painted in a single go, others built up in four or five layers—so that its expression changes dramatically with the light. That is one of the work’s key charms.
Beyond the Support
Mina Akagi’s practice does not stop at the canvas.
She takes an approach in which the site for expressing her worldview is not limited to the support itself; as long as it lies within the domain of the work, she extends and connects that worldview wherever possible.
Captions
One distinctive element of her approach is the caption for each work. Ordinarily the gallery lists the title, year of production, and materials, but as you can see, Mina Akagi makes her own. Their impact is strong enough that they could stand as artworks in their own right.
There are two types of captions: “butterfly” and “moth.”
“For works I want people to view in the morning, I make butterfly captions; for works I want them to view at night, I make moth captions”—this is how she chose to express the distinction.
The Back of the Work
The back of the canvas is also filled edge to edge with writing.
The message she conveys through the reverse side is: “There are things you cannot understand by looking only at the front; for those who want to see the back, I am, in fact… painting the back as well.” She is an artist with the power to convey the feelings she pours into her work. As this cannot be shared in photographs, it becomes a privilege reserved for the collectors who welcome the work into their hands.
Conclusion
There are times when she goes through severe emotional highs and lows, but her practice—which crosses right brain and left brain, the artistic mind and the linguistic mind—clearly mobilizes tremendous energy, and I came away feeling the sincerity of her artistic spirit.
The fluency with which she wove her words while speaking about her work and herself, and her attitude of taking full accountability for explaining her work, made the encounter deeply pleasant. Anyone who has the chance to meet her as a viewer will naturally want to root for her.
I will continue to look forward to what lies ahead for her.
