ICC
Anonymous Life
"Aevum" 2009-12
WATANABE Go
photo
photo: KIOKU Keizo
Collection of the artist
Courtesy of ARATANIURANO
The series titled "Face" is made up of images of human faces with extremely realistic textures, generated with computer graphics. These pictures look so real that the viewer involuntarily hesitates to judge whether the respective person exists in reality, or the pictures show someone who doesn't actually exist. The artist states that his interest lies in "what it is that makes us recognize a human as being human," and that vague borderline between real and virtual image that he highlights in his work evokes in us a strange kind of sensation.
On display at this exhibition is an animation featuring subtly different, superimposed 3D model of the face with three different textures (skins). The title Aevum is a Latin expression for the "mean between time and eternity" – an intermediate term bridging the eternity of god as a super-temporal form of existence, and the finiteness of the physically limited human realm, indicating a deathless time that involves transition but no ending.
WATANABE Go
Born 1975 in Hyogo. Completed a major in oil painting at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. His remarkable artistic endeavors in Japan and abroad include the creation of hyperrealistic, deceptively real-looking photo and video works using 3D computer graphics. Participated in the Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2006), as well as in major group exhibitions including "Carpe Diem. Seize the day" (Toyota Municipal Museum of Art) and "Cosmic Travelers – Toward the Unknown" (Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo) among others.
http://www.arataniurano.com/artists/watanabe_go/