REINAUCHIDA

About 60,000 years ago, Cro-Magnons painted images on cave walls.
The power of imagination became pictures, and they expanded their hope and dreams through them.
 

In the pitch-dark caves where they painted, I believe the Cro-Magnons must have been dreaming of a window.
For us today, windows have become essential.
Even if the sun were to disappear and we created an artificial sun, people would still make windows.
 

I decided to replace the cave with a room, and to hang a curtain on a blank wall—
because I want you to imagine a window beyond it.
 

That is how the work Dreams of Cro-magnon was born.
 

I paint with oil paints on earth-toned crushed velour fabric that evokes cave paintings.
A wall that ripples like a cave… becomes a curtain.
I thought that if I created a curtain on a modern, empty white wall, you could imagine a window there.
 

The curtain being open and closed is similar to opening and closing our eyelids.
 

When our eyes are closed, we can imagine an invisible world (images) that rises in our mind.
When our eyes are open, the visible world spreads across our view.
When the curtain is closed, we can imagine an unseen window beyond it.
When the curtain is open, we can see the scenery outside the window, and light streams in.
 

To see with our eyes open, and to imagine what cannot be seen with our eyes closed—
I want to treasure both.
Because I believe both are elements that connect us to the world.

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Then, when the cave curtain came into being, a girl appeared in my mind.

A girl painting inside a cave.

Before she disappeared, I hurriedly tore a page from my sketchbook and began drawing her in pencil.
 

A story of a Cro-Magnon girl becoming a “cave painter” —
the Enpitsu Manga “Hajimari ha Cro-magnon” was born.
 

The protagonist is me from 20,000 years ago.
Linking the characters and events in the story with the present, I continue writing it even now.
 

This story focuses on the Cro-Magnons who tried, somehow, to preserve images in an age when images would disappear—
but the worries they carried are the same worries we have today.
What I value most is: how to draw the present, and how to live the present.
When I am troubled or in pain, the Cro-Magnons teach me wisdom, dreams, and courage.

 

2024.4