From The Mountain Lake Screen Tachi Series

<BIG>この屏風は大倉侍郎が、バージニヤ州のマウンテンレーク作業場で1990年滞在中に制作され、作品の題名もこれに因んでつけられている。

今回は大倉の制作した全16組のうち、5組のみが展示されているが、いずれもチラチラ光り、都市景観を思わせる直立したモニュメントである。16組全てを横に並べれば、壁を創り出し、長さは約120フィートになる。パネルは、穴をくり抜いた黒色くるみ材に黒と朱色の絵具を塗り、その後全面に大まかに金箔を兎の膠で貼り付けている。イミテーションの金箔片が、僅かな空気の動きにも揺れ、光を捉えてきらめく。時の経過とともに、金箔の小片は屏風から剥がれ落ち、木材は自然の状態に戻るというのが、作者の意図である。自らの作品が徐々に変容することの容認は、仏教の強調する自然の絶え間ない状況変化のメタファーと考えられる。</BIG>

These screens were produced by Okura Jiro in Virginia during the artist’s 1990 residence at the Mountain Lake Workshop, which has given its name to the title of the work.

Although only five screens from the series are on display here, Okura created sixteen in all, each its own vertical monument recalling a glimmering cityscape. When all sixteen are set up side by side, they create the effect of a wall about one hundred and twenty feet in length. The panels have been made of black walnut that has been distressed and painted with black and cinnabar red pigment, and then loosely covered over the entire surface with gold foil adhered with rabbit-skin glue. Pieces of imitation gold leaf sway with the slightest movement of air and glisten as they catch the light. It is the artist’s intention that, over time, bits of the gold leaf will fall from the screens and the wood will return to its natural state. His acceptance of the gradual transformation of his art can be taken as a metaphor for the ever-changing condition of nature stressed in Buddhism.