He, She, You and Me He, She, You and Me

While producing three-dimensional works during the early years of his career, from around 2009, SOUTOME Teppei (1980-) has continued to work with painting as his main medium. A work in which Soutome eliminates the use of vivid colors previously characteristic of his practice to instead employ an entirely monochrome palette, is He, She, You and Me which he had painted in the wake of the 2011 earthquake disaster. The work has been developed from Soutome’s He and She series which depict overlapping figures that at once appear both male and female; indistinguishable as to whether they are facing frontwards or with their backs to the viewer. Hidden in the depths of this monochrome screen, is an array of bright colors. Although Soutome’s paintings can be considered as adhering to the genealogy of Minimalism and Color Field, they also connote the illusions that such had eliminated. By positively interpreting the plurality of visual experiences that differ depending on the viewer, and conveying this plurality itself in his paintings, Soutome achieves in creating a system that enables viewers themselves to unravel the narratives that are contained within the works. From a glass on the table to the moon in the sky, every day our eyes capture various things beyond different perspectives from which we feel something or form certain connections to memory. Like these associations, Soutome paintings appear to fluidly present to us the boundaries between concrete and abstract, nature and the artificial, personal experience and history.