That Summer...

The extraordinary time called "summer vacation" holds, in everyone's life, some memorable episode.
Running about boldly in broad daylight, playing until late into the night.
It feels long yet passes in an instant — a short season packed with exciting events under the hot summer sun: morning calisthenics, insect collecting, the pool or the sea, family trips, Obon, summer festivals, fireworks.

Isn't the motif of watermelon in season the very symbol of that summer?
With its contrast of red and green, and its refreshingly sweet, juicy taste, watermelon is a seasonal fixture that lingers in everyone's memory of summer.

This work by Hikoju Makie captures the moment a knife slices cleanly into a vivid red watermelon. Beyond the beauty of the fruit's red color and gradation, even the watermelon's black stripes and seeds are rendered with the moist, glossy beauty unique to lacquer art. The knife, too, achieves a metallic realism scarcely believable for a wooden object, capturing even the worn texture of everyday use. The wood grain of the cutting board is realistic enough to be mistaken for the real thing, even up close. Remarkably, all of these varied textures and colors are rendered purely through lacquer art, making this piece a true showcase of Hikoju Makie's mastery.

And when you lift the piece, wondering how much of it is real, you will surely be surprised by how much lighter it is than imagined.

Where does the sense of surprise, “It's lighter than I thought,” come from?
As people grow, they accumulate many experiences and try to live rationally.
Ordinarily, that experience is precisely what lets us live our daily lives conveniently — but looked at another way, it could also be said to make us insensitive to everything. In other words, in exchange for convenience, we are losing something important.

As children, the walk home from school alone was pure joy, needing nothing special to make it so. Each day brought something new; curiosity was stirred, and emotions swayed with wonder. It was a different way of living in time from the one we know now, layered as it is with accumulated experience.

This exhibition is styled to evoke the summer vacations everyone once experienced as a child — a watermelon on the low table, the faint sound of cicadas... Through viewing these works, we hope you can relive the summers stored in your own memory, and rediscover the heart of a child — a curiosity for everything, and a free way of thinking unbound by convention.

Returning to a childlike heart also becomes an occasion to reflect on one's origins.
In the end, the question of who one truly is finds its answer by looking back — who gave birth to you, where you grew up, what you loved.

This work is shaped like a watermelon, yet the word “watermelon” is deliberately absent from its title. That is because, through the motif of a watermelon, the intent is to evoke each viewer’s own cherished memories of summer.

What was your precious "that summer of that year" like? Who did you spend it with, and what did you do? If this moment, after viewing the work, becomes an occasion to remember those days and reflect a little on yourself, that would be a joy.

B-OWND

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