I was gazing in the distance absentmindedly. The light remained when I closed my eyes. ―Norio Kobayashi, LANDSCAPES (1986)
A memory of light. When one actually stands in a space that was once only imagined — a future envisioned before it existed — how does one give form to the complex emotions directed at this place that was supposed to be new? The exhibition New Flat Field takes the suburban spaces born in the twentieth century as its stage, and its starting point is precisely this kind of question. The new town / new city, once conceived as utopia, has long since ceased to renew itself; its colors have faded, and windows that were once transparent seem to have turned translucent.
And so: begin by looking at the spaces that people have lived. Then, within the sense of weightlessness that drifts through the artificial city, try to discern the faint signs of change.
The "New" in New Flat Field, while proclaiming newness, does not necessarily mean newness — as if one were living through that newness once more. Multiple layers of newness overlap here.
Having crossed in a single breath the flat field where nothing happens (※), we are indeed living in the future space we once dreamed of. And yet we ourselves will never catch up with that future; instead, we begin to walk toward another future still.
Amid a surface-level sense of déjà vu, it will become a new landscape — one that no one has ever seen before.
※ "The flat field" is drawn from William Gibson's poem "THE BELOVED (VOICES FOR THREE HEADS)" (1991), as mediated through Kyoko Okazaki's River's Edge (1994). Tomohito Ishii