Shadows on the Door 扉の影

On the white doors, there are shadows of a man and a woman. Inside the door is a space in bright blue, and in it again we see the same shadows of a man and a woman. But we see no one before the doors, and we find that the shadows have been painted there. The man who is turning the doorknob, and the woman who stands facing him: They seem to have just vanished leaving only their shadows behind. Yet we feel their presence as if they are still there. Jiro Takamatsu, who has created this work, has said, "It is those things that are, like an unsolved case of crime, full of emptinesses, due to elements that are unresolved, undefined, or unlimited, that fascinate me." Discovering that absence and emptiness (the world of shadows) can create a sense of presence that is paradoxically intense, he started his "Shadow" series in 1964. The works in the series are devices which generate a mysterious world that is both next to us and forever outside our reach, that is, an unresolved case within our own familiar reality. "Shadows on the Door" is one of the best-known pieces from this series.