Square PLAY-Dreaming of Happiness
“I wake up in the morning, get out of bed, get ready, open the apartment door, and go outside. There are so many people on the bus and subway… I, too, get on the bus and subway and turn my steps toward another square destination.”
It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of us live in a civilization of squares, surrounded by squares. And perhaps we have become so accustomed to them that it feels as if I have become one with them and become one with them.
The surface appearance of my work expresses the appearance of modern people formed in squares, as characters or figures and images. They reflect the appearance of modern people in the square frame that I see through them, and their humorous appearances seem to represent the self-portraits of the times in the spaces or objects that we use......
Whether we want it or not, we live within the frame of society. Even in the present reality, the future ideal, and the expanded reality of dreams, we are still within the frame. We are always there with the happiness we keep and the desire to be happy.
Happiness... We all dream of happiness. Although our positions and differences may be different, we can all say that we are all the same when it comes to the premise of realizing our ideals. When we dream of becoming happy, we run into the wall of reality. That is why we try to find new things or approach our ideals in a free life outside the framework of reality. However, how free do we really have to be for the value of happiness?
Let’s look at a bird in a cage and a bird flying freely in nature. How do they think of each other, and who can we say is happier and closer to happiness? It is not easy to define it easily. If we look at it from the perspective of the stability provided daily and the protection from threats around them, the bird in the cage will be happier, and if we look at it from the perspective of freedom from the constraints of given instincts, the bird in nature will be happier. This is because happiness is not an absolute value, but changes depending on perspective and situation.
Happiness is not something that is far away, nor can it be found by breaking free from the given reality and becoming free. The important thing is ‘how do we enjoy the current situation and what do we find there?’
My work is not about escaping from the reality of a square space, but rather about finding joy in it and expressing the modern people who find themselves in society, and also about creating and showing another joy within the composed screen. We have become accustomed to the squares that did not exist in nature and are suffocating and suffocating, but if we try to enjoy ourselves within it and find something we desire, not outside the frame but trying to escape from it, I think we can more easily find joy and happiness that shines brighter than the value of happiness through freedom that we so desperately desired.
