The bewitching clear, colorless liquor beckons me into a vibrant polychromatic world. The vibrations of the high-fidelity speakers shake my soul, awash in a psychedelic spectrum of sentiment and time’s embrace. Our lives are undoubtedly enriched by a range of hues, though they remain undetectable by our retains.

For we live in a sea of uncountable color permutations, the resolution growing clearer by the minute, by the second, twenty-four hours a day. Our faculties of sensory perception are constantly being updated, feeding an infinite appetite for the even the slightest improvement, the slightest edge. However, it seems we are sacrificing the richness of our imaginations in exchange for material comfort. I wonder if the sparks of creativity that once welled up in our breasts will be drowned out by the cornucopia of color that overwhelms our eyes. Will these sparks soon seem dull in comparison, fading away into the murky depths of our minds? Or will they shine brighter, entering a new evolutionary state? Or like a dying star, will this newfound brightness cede to collapse, spark relegated to nothing more than star dust.

If we were to replace our optic cells with tinted lenses, we might lose the ability to detect our world with the same perspective as before. On the other hand, we might conceivably become able to detect all the colors that we have overlooked all this time with newfound clarity.

This exhibition features the monochromatic work of four artists, consisting of pencil, charcoal, and oil on paper. I hope the exhibition will serve as a platform for sounding out the presentation and practice of our role as artists in these uncertain times.

Jun Azumatei (contemporary artist)