Torayan Picking Up the Small Sun
by Kenji Yanobe
size H22.28 x W15.74 in (H566 x W400 mm)
No Frame
Year : 2007
Edition 50
Lithograph, color pencil (hand coloring)
Signed
Delivery Time : 2 weeks
Provided in the partnership with:
YAMAMOTO GENDAI
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A selection of lithographs from the 2007 illustrated book, "Torayan's Great Adventure." Hand-colored and signed by the artist, Kenji Yanobe, with edition number.
About "Torayan's Great Adventure"
"One evening in the forest, the hero Torayan went out on a journey
holding a tiny sun. Eventually he found a number of friends, and the
tiny sun began to grow..."
The illustrated book, "Torayan's Great Adventure", was inspired by
Yanobe Kenji's visit to the Chernobyl disaster site in 1997, when he carried out the famous "Atom Suit" project. From the ruins of a
nursery school, he found a doll and a sun. He has spent the last 10 years crafting the story and the illustrations.
Afterword by Kenji Yanobe from the "Torayan's Great Adventure"
In June 1997, dressed in my radiation protection outfit "Atom Suit," I visited Chernobyl, the site of worst nuclear accident in human history.
From my experience in early childhood at the former site of Expo '70 (the Osaka World's Fair of 1970), I formed a concept of a "Pilgrimage to the Ruins of the Future" and referred to social issues through my art, I realized soon enough that I was just stuck in a kind of morass of cheap justice and superficial ambition.
The moment I stepped into the Chernobyl zone, all my romantic illusions were shattered. I was still unfazed while I walked around the destoryed city and saw the rusted-out Ferris wheel and the movie theater. It was when I met people who were living in the forest, in the area where it is forbidden to live due to the high radiation levels, that I started to feel disturbed. The elderly, who had returned to the villages where they had always lived, and the three-year-old boy, who had no choice but to live there with his mother. In contrast to the warm smiles of the friendly residents of the forest, who welcomed me in my protective suit, the expression on my face behind the helmet's glass was contorted with confusion.
It is now ten years later. The act of making works and continuing to show them is a kind of floundering in search of responses of the people I met then. It is also a journey of fighting to rehabilitate the self of my youth, which was on the verge of forgetting the human soul in the name of creative expression. This journey remains unfinished, and I expect to proceed with it for some time yet, along with that doll I picked up then and that sun I found drawn on the wall there.
Kenji Yanobe, June 2007
You can see "Torayan's Great Adventure" in Video (Japanese Only)
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- the sun is hand-colored
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