Concept
 

About My Work and Its Conceptual Background

My work consists of two relative elements.  One of them, the part formed by a box/boxes, which is a structure almost like a city or that which one associates with buildings, symbolizes the public element surrounding an individual. It implies fixed institutions and customs, presenting a domain of overwhelming external pressure in a conceptualized form.
A simple assembly of boxes arranged in linear fashion resembling a cityscape creates an oppressive space; an ambiguous zone suggesting the presence of things which confront individuals.

The other element, the photographic images beneath the "towering" box aspect, shows elements of myself, thus implying the inner parts of an individual through objects and events related to personal memories derived from daily life.  These memories are perpetually being transformed and replayed in this realm of individuality that exists within a certain social structure.  As individuality involves aspects of particularness, the photographs show the things individual to myself.

In this way, I try to grasp the social structure through elements of individuality within the relationship between personal documentation and the public, and at the same time, try to perceive through such a relationship the individuality embodied within myself.

In other words, I seek to define self-existence through the "fragments of daily life", or the documented memories, by conceptualizing a relationship between an individual and society; two elements universally found within a systematized social structure.

 
     
Copyright © 2008-2019 Akira Kobayashi. All rights reserved.
www.akirakobayashi.com