Stuck Gazes, Stuck Images

When reading Hidetaka Suzuki’s artist’s statement, it begins with two reflections on money. One is about a piggy bank, and the other is about congratulatory money. The piggy bank is filled with material value, while large sums and people’s sentiments are symbolically contained in banknotes. For Suzuki, painting is about “connecting the extremes of what is and what is not an object.” His work can hold personal memories and emotions, much like how the contents of a piggy bank are hidden from view, and it possesses the material limits of being ephemeral or easily lost. Still life in his art serves as a vessel for richer, more vibrant memories but also exists as a single image that might quickly fade. Achieving a perfect balance between these aspects is no easy task. In Suzuki’s paintings, the images are in a state of delicate balance, barely holding together. Within this network of relationships, objects oscillate between being and not being objects.

In this exhibition 《Two Values》, Suzuki primarily showcases still life paintings. The artist presents everyday objects in a quiet yet unfamiliar manner. In <Oblivion> (2022), ice appears like boiling water. In <Error> (2023), a vegetable is depicted twice, once as part of the painting and another as if it has fallen off the painting. In <ON / OFF>(2024), the heat of an ON bulb is painted in an OFF state of paint. The title of this exhibition, 《Two Values》, can be understood as an exploration between objects and their visual representation. Suzuki’s paintings create images through the material properties and the distortions of paint. Objects are captured on the canvas as images. However, when viewed in person, the brushstrokes create a sense of depth while simultaneously pulling back just before completing the image, maintaining its flatness. In <Stick> (2024), a star shape appears to be a cut-out hole but then looks like a star-shaped sticker. In <Narcissus> (2023), a turtle seems to be swimming underwater but also appears as a mural on a textured wall. In <Error>(2024) the vegetable (likely an okra common in Japan, or a similar vegetable mistaken for another) appears as if it has been cut in half or has generated a ghostly duplicate, emphasizing an ‘error’.

The exhibition title 《Two Values》, does not refer to separately listed explanations, but rather to the meeting and diverging forces within a single canvas. “I attempt to connect the extremes of what is and what is not an object through painting. I feel that painting lies somewhere in between these two extremes,” (Artist’s statement). On the canvas, his paintings float the question “What is an object?” through the interplay of paint and image. The images, floating in unfamiliarity, ultimately intersect the gaze that sees the object and the gaze that sees the painting—meeting at a point while diverging in direction. While viewing the painting, one feels the materiality; while looking at the object, a narrative emerges. This is why Suzuki traces the memory of objects in his artist’s statement. Memories are depicted by the people who were with the objects, along with the objects themselves. Objects detached from those memories remain objects, but they also serve as sources that can evoke different memories for other people. The images presented in the paintings form within a network of relationships where titles and perspectives meet and shift—literally shaping the form. Images are tenuously held together, or made to exist, through brushstrokes, narratives, and objects, sometimes converging and sometimes diverging.

Text by Konno Yuki

붙은 시선, 붙은 이미지

스즈키 히데타카(Hidetaka SUZUKI 鈴木秀尚)의 작가 노트를 읽어 보면, 화폐에 대한 두 단상에서 글은 시작한다. 하나는 화폐를 보관하는 저금통, 다른 하나는 축의금이다. 저금통에 가치가 물질적으로 채워지고, 큰 액수와 사람들의 마음이 지폐에 상징적으로 담긴다. 작가에게 회화란 바로 이런 의미에서 “사물인 것, 사물 아닌 것, 그 양극단을 연결하는 것”이다. 본인만의 기억과 마음이 담길 수 있지만 (저금통 안에 얼마나 담겼는지) 보이지 않고, 단숨에 날아가거나 사라질 수도 있는 물질적 한계를 보유하는 것이다. 초연함의 정물은 더 풍성하고 활기찬 기억을 받아주는 그릇 역할을 하기도 하지만, 금방 떨어질지도 모르는 낱장의 이미지이기도 하다. 이 사이에 완벽한 균형을 맞추기란 도통 쉬운 일이 아니다. 스즈키 히데타카의 회화에서 이미지는 간신히 붙어 있는 불균형의 상태, 이 관계망에서 사물이 되기도 사물이 되지 않기를 좋아한다.

이번 개인전 《Two Values》에서 스즈키 히데타카의 회화가 보여주는 것은 대체로 정물이다. 작가는 일상적인 사물을 조용한, 그러나 낯선 모습으로 등장시킨다. <Oblivion>(2022)에는 끓는 물과도 같은 얼음이 보이며, <Error>(2023)에서 채소는 그림에서 떨어져 나온 것처럼 밑에 하나 더 그려지고, <ON / OFF>에서 조명은 ON 상태의 열기를 물감의 OFF 상태로 그려진다. 이번 전시 제목인 《Two values》는 무엇보다 사물과 시각적 표현 사이에서 추구되었다고 이해할 수 있다. 회화는 물감의 물성과 표현의 변형이나 왜곡을 통해서 이미지를 만들며, 사물은 이미지라는 결과물로써 화면에 담긴다. 그런데 작품을 실제로 보다 보면 붓질이 깊이감을 만들어내면서도, 더 그려지기 일보 직전에 발을 빼기라도 하듯이 이미지를 평면(적)으로 유지한다. <Stick>(2024)은 별 모양이 구멍처럼 뚫려 있는 것처럼 보였다가도, 별 모양의 스티커가 붙어 있는 것처럼 보이고, <Narcissus>(2023)에서 거북이는 물속에서 헤엄치는 듯 보였다가 질감 있는 담벼락에 벽화로 그려진 것처럼 보이기도 한다. <Error>에서 채소(작가가 거주하는 일본에서 흔한 ‘오쿠라’일 것이다. 아니면 유사하나 다른 채소를 두고 어느 한쪽이 다른 한쪽과 동일한 것이 아닌 ‘오류’인, 또 다른 채소)는 반으로 자른 것처럼, 혹은 유체 이탈하듯 환영을 하나 더 생성한 것처럼 보인다.

전시 제목인 ‘두 가치’란, 열거하듯이 각각 설명되는 것이 아니라 한 화면 안에서 만나고 떨어져 나가는 힘들의 만남을 가리킨다. “사물인 것, 사물 아닌 것, 그 양 극단을 연결하는 것을 그림으로 시도한다. 그림이란 그 양 극단의 중간쯤에 위치하는 것이라고 나는 느낀다.”(작가 노트) 그의 회화는 물감과 이미지가 붙어 있는 캔버스 위에서 ‘무엇이 사물인가?’라는 질문을 그야말로 부유하게 한다. 낯섦으로 부유하는 이미지는 궁극적으로 ‘그 사물을’ 보는 시선과 ‘회화를’ 보는 시선을 교차시킨다—즉 한 지점에서 만나는 동시에 방향이 엇갈릴 수 있다. 회화로 보다가 물성을 느끼고, 사물을 보다가 서사가 떠오른다. 작가 노트에서 스즈키 히데타카가 사물의 기억을 더듬는 이유가 바로 여기에 있다. 기억은 사물과 함께 있던 사람에 의해, 그와 함께 그려지는 것이다. 그 기억에서 떨어져 나간 사물은 사물로 남지만, 동시에 어떤 사람에게 또 다른 기억을 소환할 근원지와도 같다. 회화가 보여주는 이미지는, 제목이나 시선이 하나로 만났다가도 다시 한쪽에 힘이 쏠리기도 하는 관계망 안에서 형성形成하는—말 그대로 형태를 이루는 것이다. 이미지는 붓질에 의해, 서사에 의해, 사물에 의해, 이것들을 아울러 또는 떨어져 나가면서(도) 간신히 붙어 있게=존재하게 된 것이다.

글 콘노 유키

For the solo show “Two Values“

Recently, I increasingly use AI to generate images in the process of production. This is because I usually create paintings based on images taken from the Internet, and it is easy to experiment when I want to make a slight change or see a pattern.
AI is already being used everywhere in the world, whether we are aware or not. I am sure it is in the content you see today. When I think about it, I feel that my own thoughts, choices, and even the subjectivity of my own practice beyond that are being deprived little by little.
So I wondered if I could somehow resist AI. I wanted to show them something incomprehensible that would make them hold their hands.
I have previously depicted a wearable stuffed animal under the theme of what can be seen by hiding things. The stuffed animal which is the origin of the wearable stuffed animal is a substitute for an animal or character. A human being wears a stuffed animal inside and poses as a character. There is a grotesque perversion in wearable stuffed animals that injects a sense of vividness into something fictional. Here I sense a certain kind of humanity.
I then drew out a picture of the AI-generated image of the wearable stuffed animal. Looking at the completed picture, I felt it was like a proof photograph. It seemed to me that the emptiness of forcibly capturing the surface and identifying the individual, and the hollow image created by the AI, were connected by being made into a painting.

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最近制作の過程でAIでイメージを生成することが増えた。というのも普段から私はインターネットの画像を元に絵画を制作しているが、少し変化を加えたい、もしくはパターンを見てみたいという際に手軽に試すことができるからだ。
私達が意識している、していないに関わらず、すでに世の中の至る所でAIは使われている。きっと今日あなたが見たコンテンツの中にもあるはずだ。そう思うと、なんだか自分自身の思考や選択、その先にある実践の主体性までもが、少しづつ奪われているように感じる。
そこで私はどうにかAIに抵抗できないかと考えた。彼らが手を止めてしまうような、理解不能なものを見せたいと思った。
以前、隠すことで見えてくるものというテーマで着ぐるみを描いたことがある。着ぐるみの元となるぬいぐるみはそもそも動物やキャラクターの代替物だ。その中に人間が入り、キャラクターを装う。着ぐるみは架空のものに生々しさを注入するようなグロテスクな倒錯がある。ここにある種の人間らしさのようなものを私は感じる。
そうして私はAIが生成した着ぐるみの画像を絵に描き出した。完成した絵を見ていると、
証明写真のようだなと感じた。強制的に表面を写しとり個人を特定する空虚さと、AIの作り出した中身のないイメージが、絵になることで繋がったように思えた。

For the group show “Ghost Letter“

PDF / EN: To Hidetaka Suzuki Solo Exhibition “Bird and Mirror” / 2023

PDF / JA: 鈴木秀尚 個展 「鳥と鏡」に寄せて / 2023

For the solo show “Bird and Mirror“

Hidetaka Suzuki’s figurative paintings depict uncanny, transient fragments of everyday life that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction.

Luxuriating in their absence of context and thematic dissociation from one another, his paintings are unified by their soft focus and wistful colour palette.

Suzuki’s paintings are translated from found online images, rendered in a distinct, horizontally vibrating brushwork that assumes a conceptual effect equivalent to pixels on a screen, drawing our attention to the mediation of his subject matter.

The ongoing series of Untitled paintings draws their compositions from AI-generated images, an interest that stems from Suzuki’s professional experience working as a programmer.

These images are treated with equivalence to his other source imagery, which include crops of intimate anonymous family scenes, still lifes and portraits, further frustrating our ability to differentiate between original and copy, truth and fiction.

Informed by the texture and ephemerality of digital images, Suzuki’s works vacillate between the virtual and the resolutely painterly, addressing technology’s capacity for appropriation with art historical modes of reproduction. Stripped of their contexts and cropped beyond recognition, these scenes are suspended between evocations of a before and after, as though severed from a lost sequence residing in someone’s memory, or on an unidentified hard drive.

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鈴木秀尚の具象絵画は、現実と虚構の境界を曖昧にする、日常生活の不気味で儚い断片を描いている。

文脈の不在とテーマが互いに切り離されていることに惹きつけられる彼の絵画は、ソフトフォーカスと切ない色彩によって統一されている。

彼の絵画は、拾い物のオンライン・イメージから発見され、水平方向に振動する独特の筆致で描かれる。その筆致は画面上のピクセルに相当するコンセプチュアルな効果をもたらし、私たちの注意を主題の媒介に引きつける。

現在制作中の「Untitled」シリーズは、AIによって生成された画像から構成されている。

これらの画像は、匿名で親密な家族の情景や静物、肖像画などを切り取った他の画像と同等に扱われ、オリジナルとコピー、真実と虚構を区別することをさらに拒否している。 デジタル画像の質感と儚さに影響された鈴木の作品は、バーチャルと絵画的なものの間で揺れ動き、テクノロジーの流用能力と美術史的な複製様式に取り組んでいる。

文脈から切り離され、認識できないほどトリミングされたこれらのシーンは、誰かの記憶、あるいは正体不明のハードディスクに保存された失われたシークエンスから切り離されたかのように、以前と以後の喚起の間で宙吊りにされている。

BY Edel Assanti

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私はネットで家族写真を見つけることに夢中になっていた時期がある。
他人のプライベートな写真を何の関係も無い私が見れてしまうことへの罪悪感と、その奇妙さに惹かれていた。普段では決して見ることのできないものが開かれているのだ。

ある時Tumblrでリブログした海外のものであろう家族写真にコメントがついていた。それは英語のコメントであったが、内容としてはなぜあなたが私の父の写真を持っているのか。すぐに消しなさいという怒りの内容だった。

もちろんこれは私がアップロードしたものではないし、正確にいうと私が所有しているものでもない。どこかで撮影した写真がネットにアップロードされ、何の因果か私のダッシュボードに表示されたのだ。私が投稿を消したとしてもデータがネット上から消滅することは決して無いが、すぐにそのリブログを消した。

コメントを読んだ時、不意に湿気を帯びた何かに触れられたような、何も無いところから視線を感じるような不気味さを感じた。虚構であるはずのものが、何かのきっかけで現実と接続され、こちら側に迫ってくる。私が安全であると思っていた場所は、向こうから見れば手の届く場所だったのだ。

Hidetaka Suzuki stands out for his technical ability and purposefully minimal compositions.

The oil painting medium, known for its hyperrealistic tendencies and its technical difficulties, makes up for an interesting contrast to Suzuki’s choice of radically simple subject matter.

Whether it’s red peppers, such as in Red Basket, or a half-cut lemon, such as in Bomb, the viewer is left wondering what made these items so special for the artist to dedicate time to paint them. Suzuki doesn’t speak, he suggests.

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鈴木秀尚は、その技術力と意図的に簡素化したコンポジションで傑出している。

油絵という画材はそのリアリスティックな傾向と技術的な難しさで知られているが、鈴木の選ぶ過激でシンプルな題材は油絵というメディウムと興味深い対比となっている。

Red basketのような赤ピーマンであれ、Bombのような半分にカットされたレモンであれ、見る側は作家が時間をかけて描くほどこれらのアイテムが特別なものであるのかどうか疑問に思うことだろう。

彼は語ることをせず、絵の中で示唆をする。

Sophie Arni / Curator