Pictures M2－M6 絵画 M2～M6

In the early 1970s when Shigi started his artistic career, Superrealistic paintings based on photographs by Richard Estes and others were often featured in various art exhibitions, including "The 11th International Art Exhibition of Japan. In the same exhibition", the artist showed a work which presented a photograph and an acrylic side by side. From 1976 through 1977, he stayed in Wolfsburg, Germany. This multi-canvas work, which portrays the streets of the nearby city of Hanover, won him the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Award at "The 12th International Art Exhibition of Japan". (The award was given for M2 and M6.)
The original photograph (M1) of the streets is excluded from the work. The first piece is an acrylic (M2) copied from the photograph. Then it is photographed (M3), and then copied again (M4), and this is followed by another cycle. This long work, 10 meters in total, depicts the state we are in the contemporary society, where copies flood us but we are never allowed to see the original. In this work, the acrylic material with its inorganic, cold feel, which is later to be used by itself without photographs, creates a balanced tension against the photographs.