岡本康明

Yasuaki Okamoto

Walking through the crisp crunch of fallen leaves
Walking against the flow of the river
Walking in a sharp wind
Walking on the earth, with the feeling of air

The 1990s were also called a simulation society based on the concept proposed by Baudrillard. It was said that the boundary between reality and unreality became ambiguous, and as the two blended together, a hyperreal world emerged where the fictional (unreal) world surpassed reality. In my solo exhibition “Art of Expanded Existence,” presented in the 90s, I explored the theme of the experiential reality of our physical bodies living in a highly information-driven society, and the state of the body within the experiential structure shaped by informatization. Over thirty years have passed since then, and today, driven by advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI), social media and virtual reality technology continue to evolve. While I too benefit daily from the progress of interactive media, I am sometimes struck by the sense that this very rapid social change is itself invading the body. For this solo exhibition, faced with the reality of bodily hollowing we now confront due to the media-driven transformation of the contemporary body, I began with the question: what emerges when I take up a camera, repeat the real act of simply walking, and observe what becomes visible through that experience? Through photographs taken while traveling to various locations, footage of ascending a river toward its source, and an installation composed of previously created texts and objects, I would like to reconsider the bodily horizon at this point in time.