Toru Yoshikawa

とにかく今風ではない古臭い絵画的な作品を作りたかった。たとえば19世紀ロマン主義の画家たちのパレットのような、ウンブリアの土の色で筆跡も整えず、受け手への忖度や自分自身のエゴから生じるためらいの隙間をつくらないように、やり直しの効かない紙の上に表現したかった。浮かび上がる数多の先人たちの亡霊を払い避けながら逃げるように描き続けていると、徐々に自分の知らない絵が出来上がってきた。それは今の自分にできる最大限の抵抗にも思えた。

今回選択したモノタイプという手法は、プレートに描いたものを紙に写しとるというシンプルな手法で、作品は版画にもかかわらず、複数エディションを刷ることが出来ないユニーク作品という特長がある。その性質から「プレス機を通した絵画」とも、「版画家の絵画」などとも呼ばれる。

I wanted to create paintings that are anything but contemporary—deliberately outdated and painterly. Think of the earthy palette of 19th-century Romanticism, colors like Umbrian soil, applied without smoothing out the brushstrokes. I aimed to avoid the gaps born from self-censorship or ego—those hesitations meant to accommodate the viewer or flatter the self. Instead, I chose to work on paper, a medium that offers no second chances.

As I continued to paint—almost fleeing from the countless ghosts of past masters that kept rising to the surface—something unexpected began to emerge. The image took on a life of its own, unfamiliar to even me. It began to feel like the strongest form of resistance I could offer in this moment.

The technique I used for this body of work is monotype: a deceptively simple process in which an image painted on a plate is transferred to paper. Though classified as printmaking, each piece is one of a kind—incapable of being reproduced in multiples. Because of this, monotypes are often called "paintings passed through a press" or even "a painter's print."