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2004   Mami Kosemura [ 1975 -]

Sweet Scent
2003
Video Installation
playback time : 9min.25sec.(endless repeat)
Department of Fine Arts (Oil Painting)

Through my work, I bring paintings to life by recreating them with a modern twist, using video. The gap between the painted scene and reality comes to light when the painted scene is actually brought back to life in a three-dimensional space. 

"Sweet Scent" was based on a still life painting by Francisco de Zurburan (1598-1664, Spain). The fruits and dishes were recreated on a table in a room, and the decaying fruits were filmed with a digital camera through hourly interval photography, which continued for four months. As is always the case, it is almost impossible to recreate a painting. Again in this time, I couldn't stack the oranges in a beautiful pyramid shape on top of the basket, so I used wire and glue to secure them from the back. The part that the camera doesn't show is always disastrous. After that, the photographs were colored, retouched and some drawings were added, and the shape of the objects were transformed to bring them closer to the original painting. They were then connected all together and edited as a film.

The footage produced in this way is both documentary and fiction. The flowers and fruits become deformed so much so that even I, who filmed them, cannot judge whether these flowers should be called real or fake. When I connected all the retouched pictures and watched them as a film, I couldn’t help but sense the obvious reality of the dying flowers and fruits. 

By building a three dimensional makeshift set to recreate a painting, I get a whole new sense of the spaces in the paintings. Suppose you are sitting in a chair looking at a beautiful still life from the front. Then, if you suddenly stand up and look at it from the side, you see an "image that should not be seen". This is another image that exists within the "ideal scene" of a painting. While always concealing the other image, the paintings show the viewer an "ideal scene" through the artist's clever manipulation. But when the image is filmed, the movement of the camera reveals other hidden images that give the film a vivid, vital force. I wanted to create a way to view such images.

< the inside of the back cover >

A Decade of the Nomura Prize 

Edited by : The University Art Museum, The Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo (Kyo Shimazu, Makoto Hosoya, Haruna Seo)
Published by : The University Art Museum, The Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
Subsidized by : Nomura Cultural Foundation
Designed and Printed by : BIJUTSU SHUPPAN-SHA CO., LTD.
Date of Issue : February 26, 2009

©︎ 2009 The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts

Printed in Japan
All right reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.