The distance between humans and displays is growing ever closer. Whether checking emails or reading news articles, the characters we encounter most frequently in our daily lives are digital ones made of light. The blending of red, green, and blue light displayed on screens enables infinite color reproduction and high-definition rendering. Digital characters are born at the touch of a button and vanish just as quickly. Their existence is extremely faint; moreover, standardized by “fonts,” they have turned into inorganic symbols.

On the other hand, handwritten, analog characters possess a wide variety of personalities. Beyond the choice of materials like ink, graphite, or sumi ink, they contain rich elements that make up each character—such as masculinity or femininity, an angry scribble, letters trembling with despair, or a rushed scrawl. These traits stimulate the imagination of the viewer. Unlike digital characters, whose sole mission is to be easily legible to the human eye, analog characters are organic and rich in emotion.

However, when you magnify digital characters, you find tiny square elements called pixels that form the letters, capable of displaying up to 16.77 million colors. Even a black character is expressed using a diverse array of colors, combined in a way that makes it easily perceivable as black to the human eye. Contrary to the inorganicity we usually feel, a rich expression emerges there—as if reflecting human intent or emotion, or resembling a painting that pursues beauty.

In this work, by magnifying the tiny digital characters we see on displays every day and recreating them on canvas with paint, I have transformed them from an extremely unstable, fleeting existence dependent on display devices and electric power into something that exists permanently as a tangible entity to be appreciated. While various organic elements have been lost through deepening symbolism, inorganic yet beautiful elements have been gained. This work focuses on the relationship between humans and characters, which remain close to us while continuously evolving.

“Zen” means yes, “Nasu” means to accomplish, “Ai” means love, “Kane” means bell, “Kiri” means fog, “Baku” means explosion, “Shiki” means knowledge.

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Elements , 2016-2019
10*10pixels W27.3 x H27.3cm　13*13pixels W45.5 x H45.5cm　acrylic paint, canvas