How much of the universe does one actually see from the moment of birth through the end of one’s life? On the other hand, are not the images that actually live on in one’s memories only a tiny fraction of the total viewed? It varies individually, but, in general, visual memory will simply pass into nothingness unless you are truly interested in the objects or scenes, and even then our memories are imperfect and narrow. Can you recall the last time you walked through a crowd at an airport or mall – the countless number s of people passing by – did an image of any particular face imprint upon your memory?
When creating a memory sometimes the eye may linger and the image will become clearer. At other times, people dissolve into colors and lights become lines from the past to the future; so quickly are these memories lost. Hashimura relies on all five senses to create work evocative of the mood of each individual minute. Some instances are forgotten so quickly that a woman running becomes bisected, split between the seconds of the past and the future. At midnight a new days begins and humans are forever torn in two, losing sense of the brief reality of the present. By painting with this reality, Hashimura is showing us how his memory works.
How about the Jinrikisha (Rickshaw) that you saw in Asakusa, Tokyo? You may vaguely remember the color and shape of the car t, but you would probably recall neither the faces of the riders nor the man pulling the rickshaw. And what about the views you see through the train or car window while you are traveling from one location to another? Unless you saw something particularly special, these moving landscapes would not be carved into your heart. In our daily lives, we think that we “see” things but in fact we rarely “look” at them. Sometimes you can maintain vivid memories of something you are exposed to for a certain period of time – like the people sitting across from you during a train ride.
Humans capture the world through five senses and develop confidence in their thoughts and
actions based on accumulated knowledge and nurtured experiences. The things that we “see” are no exception. These are unconsciously translated into information within the mind, regardless of whether they were actually “looked” at or not. The accumulation of images that we see but do not look at will result in an ironic outcome – something that we are unconsciously afraid of at the bottom of our heart; that is, we think we understand but, in
truth, we don’t.
At midnight everyday, an old day ends and a new day begins. Tomorrow becomes today. In every moment, potential visual memories come into sight within our lives. Most of them are forgot ten without ever having been truly acknowledged. These memories are random and vague and yet sometimes unexpectedly clear. MEMORY FRAGMENTS: TOKYO came from my
efforts to visually express these difficult and hard to explain images through my camera lens.
