My goal for this exhibition was to explore leisure, and how different people use it. To achieve this goal, most of my work focuses on the background, to get my audience to look at the bigger picture. By doing so, I also wanted my audience to feel almost sucked into the piece as if experiencing the depicted moment for themselves. The audience should start with Walk Through the City and end with Utopia to get the full experience of this exhibition.

 

There are a total of 9 pieces in my exhibition, all showing different views and different types of ways people would spend their time. Starting with my pieces revolving around leisure in japan, the first piece will be Walk Through the City, a piece dedicated to capturing the business of a street in Tokyo. Underneath this painting will be a watercolor painting titled Over a Bridge. I decided to put these next to each other due to how they are similar to each other. These two pieces both explore leisure due to how Walk Through the City is a piece depicting people walking around, shopping in the area similar to how people are walking around enjoying a summer festival in Over a Bridge, in a sense both groups of people in their respective paintings are taking time to come out and relax.

 

To the right of these two pieces will be my photomontage pieces titled Looking Out and Lucid Dreams, with the former on top and the latter below. I chose Looking Out to be on top because I wanted some slight composition difference between the two columns of work. Rather than having two vertical pieces next to each other, by having Looking Out on top, I thought it would add to the audiences’ experience while looking at my work. Lucid Dreams is placed below Looking Out due to how I wanted to play with time, how leisure was different from ancient times and now. The girls in Lucid Dreams, represent ancient times due to their garments. Within the piece itself, there are also many things that add to this idea of leisure throughout the years. Looking Out is a depiction of a girl taking in her landscape, as one would do when they are comfortable spending time outside. Both pieces have elements of surrealism, using real photos but having certain things be enlarged or put out of place to create this dream-like feel. 

 

Next to Looking Out will be my piece Restaurant View, a black and white piece done in marker to capture a busy night in my parent’s restaurant. In this piece, leisure is explored when one goes to a restaurant, simply enjoying the food and the people that are also enjoying their respective dishes. The joy that comes from eating restaurant food is a feeling I’ve experienced since I was young, watching people spend time in the restaurant and seeing their faces light up when they try their food. I thought that this piece would be a perfect addition to my exhibit regarding leisure. 

 

Under Restaurant View are Father and Daughter and Utopia, with the former on the left and the latter on the right. Father and Daughter is a collage made from magazines glued on a piece of watercolor paper. While creating this I was reminded of the times when my father would bring me out to the city to walk around for fun, which is why Utopia is placed next to Father Daughter. These two pieces connect to one another due to how the piece on the left represents the current times of a child experiencing leisure time with her father, but Utopia explores the possibility of her bringing her children to walk around the city in that piece, carrying this tradition down.

My series titled New life consisting of two photomontages is centered around a pandemic. Similar to the past and present idea as seen in previous pieces, this series actually merges both time periods. The series illustrates how life goes on during the Spanish Flu and the Covid-19 pandemic, showing an almost bizarre reality where people are still finding time to safely go out and enjoy their leisure time.