前谷康太郎

Kotaro MAETANI

I began this series three years ago, at a time when increasing professional demands left me little opportunity to make work except during long drives by car. I was commuting 70 kilometers each way between Tamba-Sasayama and Takatsuki, often departing before sunrise and moving through a landscape transformed by the gradual modulation of early morning light.

Within this constrained interval, the act of traveling itself became a site of perception—a rare moment in which I could reencounter the light that had long preoccupied my practice.

One midwinter morning, I stopped at a vantage point to observe the subtle coloration of the sky before dawn—a before glow. Across the glossy black surface of the car body, gradients of orange and indigo appeared, flowing like rivers over metal. Apart from the sky and its reflection, the surroundings were submerged in darkness, producing the sensation that the void itself was binding two otherwise separate spaces.

Here, the immaterial light of the sky was momentarily inscribed onto a cold, two-dimensional curved surface. Using a macro lens, I photographed this reflection. This image became the first work in the Flatland series.

Flatland records a moment in which light traverses dimensions, condensing an ungraspable world onto a planar surface. The work functions as a translation of a non-verbal experience and as a document of a threshold—where spatial, material, and perceptual boundaries momentarily dissolve.