KUNII Keiko: On the Works in This Exhibition
In the later years of Zhou Hao’s life, we always painted side by side.
A corner of our living room was our shared studio.
Even though we worked next to each other, we were each so absorbed in our own paintings that, surprisingly, the other person’s presence was never distracting. I painted sitting in a chair, while he always painted standing up. He placed a small easel on top of two stacked map cases, adjusting it to the height of his eyes.
And whenever we finished painting, we both put everything away — not only the paints, but also the easels and canvases — and left the room clean and tidy.
That never changed, right up until the very end.
The year before he died, Zhou Hao and I discussed it and bought more than twenty thick canvases, each measuring 60 × 45 cm, intending that either of us could use them.
Zhou Hao loved looking at them stacked by the window. He seemed so pleased by the sight that he wrote on Facebook, “I find myself simply gazing at them.”
But in the end, he never used them.
They remained stacked there, still white. But when there are blank canvases waiting to be painted, I thought, there is only one thing to do: paint them.
For this exhibition, I have used eight of those canvases together to paint a large table.
A table that feels somehow loose and easy.
A place where someone might come.
I have also made six other works depicting various things on a tabletop.
The table is a place of happiness.
And I feel that, from there, I may someday connect with something unseen.
Zhou Hao kept telling me, until the very end, “Paint good paintings.”
So I always intended to continue painting even after I was alone. But for the first two years or so, even when I finally managed to paint a small work, it was truly painful. I often painted through tears.
I came to understand all over again that painting means facing one’s own heart.
It is only recently that I have finally been able to paint properly again.
And I still feel that he is painting beside me.
KUNII Keiko