It's been a while since I outlined a frame on the wall with masking tape.
Lately, I've been listening to "Fujiyama" from the Jazz Impressions of Japan album most mornings. The quiet, flowing melody is perfect for those moments just after waking, when I'm still trying to make sense of dream fragments—brewing coffee, letting the aroma and music gradually ease me into a state where I can gather my thoughts.
Sitting on the couch, I look up and there it is: the frame.
I've been thinking about what to fill it with. Something that connects with me, I thought. Recently, I came across a postcard at a café advertising a small exhibition in Kichijoji and went to check it out, but didn't find anything that felt right. Truth is, I don't really know what would fit. Perhaps it's impossible to decide until something is actually hanging there.
Then September arrived, and I was reminded by a past note to myself in the calendar: go see the solo exhibition at Seizan Gallery in Ginza.
Not long after arriving in Japan, I visited the SOMPO Museum to see Van Gogh's Sunflowers, only to stumble upon a work by artist Yusuke Ishigami called The Day I Saw the Stars. It transported me back to a childhood memory—seeing thousands of fireflies flickering like a shimmering galaxy in the night. The impression was so vivid that I shared the experience on the ArtSticker website, and that's when I learned about Ishigami's September solo show.
At the gallery, I was lucky enough to meet Yusuke Ishigami himself. I was surprised and delighted that he still remembered my comment. Having the chance to speak directly with an artist is truly precious. What an artist wishes to convey through their work is received in different forms depending on the viewer's own experiences. More often than not, a painting awakens the viewer's own memories or thoughts. The Day I Saw the Stars depicts a scene of lying in a car watching a meteor shower, yet it carried me across time to a childhood memory—of my brother and me seeing countless fireflies like a river of stars.
The scene created by the artist and the memories evoked in the viewer overlap and blend like dream images, forming a unique viewing experience within the space of the exhibition. What's fascinating is that when you exchange these thoughts with the artist, the different perspectives on a single thing might become seeds for future creations in each of our lives.
As for that frame on the wall—it eventually found its proper form. The blurred points of light in the night resemble the scene I saw as a child, but the distant mountain ridge illuminated in the dark, the elongated trails of red taillights—these fragments absent from my memory merge together in a way that's both surreal and strangely fitting, just like a dream.
It's like a window. But what you see through it is a dreamscape connected across time and space. The child I was, the adult I've become, and all the people and things I've encountered—woven together in this dream.
This is the painting Palace of Memories (Shimmering Atmosphere), by artist Yusuke Ishigami.
