Press Release for Ring Ring at Yuka Tsuruno Gallery, 2016

This is Shimura’s second solo show at Yuka Tsuruno Gallery, and will showcase ring ring, one of his most important works, for the first time in Japan. During the three-months long residency program in Taipei Artist Village in 2010, Shimura was overwhelmed by the world tinged with red and gold in preparation for the Chinese New Year, and produced two works taking this experience as his inspiration: Goldfish, which projects moving images of goldfish onto trees, and ring ring, which uses gold bells as a screen. For the exhibition in Taipei, footage of the water’s edge at sea shot from above was projected on a hexagonal screen composed of 120,000 bells hung like a window shade. The waves that come and go vertically called to mind the image of fireworks, an indispensable feature of any Chinese New Year celebration.

　The title ring ring derives from the “ringing” of bells when viewers enter the work, and the “ring” form of the screen, but also from the “lin” in huan ying guang lin, meaning “welcome” in Mandarin, an expression Shimura learned by ear soon after his arrival in Taipei. The artist says that learning that the Chinese character for lin, 臨, means “to come” convinced him that it matched his work perfectly as it is completed by the viewer entering into the light. Born out of the scenes in Taipei witnessed by the artist, the work will reemerge here in Japan as a pentagonal screen composed of 100,000 bells, inviting viewers into a golden light accompanied by the melody of bells.