波羅波羅焼飯図Parapara Fried Rice

Parapara Fried Rice
Shuntaro Yamashita & Tetsuya Tsuji
2016
printed on gold paper 4 boards
170.0 x 340.0 （cm）
personal collection

“Parapara Fried Rice” is a folding screen adhering faithfully to the style of the Rinpa school Japanese painting, which was founded by Tawaraya Sotatsu.
At Tawaraya, a workshop where a number of painters were employed, he set up a system in which he drew the designs and chose the colors, then had the painters complete the works.
You could say he was the first art director. If Mr.Yamashita is the art director for “Parapara Fried Rice,” then photographer Mr.Tsuji is the skilled painter. Group production at a painters’ workshop bears a close resemblance to modern-day ad production. Back then, the success of a painting depended on a patron, such as a warlord or wealthy merchant.
Today that would translate into a sponsor or client. The motif here is fried rice because of who the Brain Drool Exhibition’s sponsor is.
By capturing the moment the fried rice gets tossed into the air and rescaling
it into a work of art, the sizzle becomes more beautiful than tasty.
At the moment, “Drool” comes out from viewer’s brain along with confusion. Concrete form, abstraction, realism and patterns all co-exist on the screen of a Rinpa school work. This piece replicates all these elements through photography and design (layout). By printing a normally two-dimensional photograph on gold leaf and fashioning it into a folding screen, it became
a three-dimensional photo whose expression alters according
to the viewing angle and surrounding light.
As they did back then, many artisans toiled away to complete this work.
We prepared, retouched, printed, mounted and drew. It was like a modern-day painters’ workshop, just like the old Rinpa school.
When I saw the rice getting fried up in that jet-black wok,
I remembered I was hungry. I’m gonna go eat some fried rice at
the Chinese restaurant across the street.
............ Extract from monthly Rinpa magazine “Rinpa Report”