Color Blindness Test Chart No.6 色盲検査表 No.6

Shimizu's works are filled with surprises and discoveries. He has the magic touch that can turn something cold into something hot, and something boring into something exciting. Familiar things are turned in a flash into unknown, strange objects. In Shimizu's humorous, and yet somewhat unnerving, feats of amazing transformation, we find relief from everyday life. In this "Color Blindness Test Chart No.6", the tool for medical examination that is scientific and inhuman is turned into a hot picture strewn with luscious images of women. The artist is no less mischievous in his other works: A realistic sculpture of a pillar-box, produced in the same period as the above piece, the pillar-box, which is supposed to stand still and quietly swallow mail, is carried around on the artist's back to provide a friendly companionship on a walk like a faithful dog. In "Color Blindness Test Chart No.6", in which the shape of the number six is recognizable, we see not only women but picturesque scenes from foreign cities reminiscent of picture postcards. They look like scenes from a movie glimpsed through a telescope. The stoic world of numbers and the world of sensual pleasure and imagination: Probably the painting tests which of these two is recognized first by the viewer. For "No.4" and "No.9" of this ingenious series, Shimizu was rewarded the First Prize of "the 7th Shell Art Prize Exhibition" in 1963.