[Audio Guide]
The artist’s name and the names of basic colors are inscribed, one on each of nine canvases that expand from right to left. Except for the panel with the artist’s name, they are all the same size, and are evenly painted in the same color regardless of the color written on them. The word “My” plays a key role here. Tokutomi says, “What we usually refer to using the same word, ‘red,’ may actually be perceived by different individuals as completely different colors, and may be no more than individual attributes, like the names we are given.” Here it can be said to transfer the filter of “me,” which inevitably emerges when we experience feelings, onto the work. There is art, which we expect to be universal, and there are perception and recognition, which are entirely personal. This work conveys the figure of Tokutomi the artist as an individual who, while battling between these two extremes, remains fully devoted to art.
