Winter has come, and the nights are getting much longer.
Illuminations can be seen in the city for Christmas, and the season of being conscious of light has begun.
This is the December exhibition.
I planned this exhibition as a casual one that anyone can enjoy, just like this illumination.

For the "Illuminare" exhibition, Tatsushi Kikutani, Daisuke Samejima, Ayumi Suzuki, and Takunori Nakata exhibited both old and new works under the theme of "Night Lights.
All four artists have different concepts in mind, and although we were a little hesitant to select only a selection of their works on the theme of "Night Lights," we are grateful to them for their willingness to cooperate with us.

Although this is the place to introduce each artist, I would like to write about the theme of "lights of the night" together with the artists.

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Summer of 2023.
I went to Hachijojima for a family vacation.

I have always had a connection to Hachijojima, and this was my third or fourth trip there.
The first time was when I was in elementary school.
The first time was when I was in elementary school, visiting Hachijojima for a summer camp of the Boy Scouts (Cub Scouts, since I was in elementary school at the time). I hardly remember what we did, but the only thing I remember is that we had a "night training" where we tested our courage by walking alone on a moonlit night around the guest house where we were staying.
I was so scared that I had to walk through the moonlit cobblestone wall and the rustling trees behind it that I took a step and stopped, then another and another, and so on. It was hard to move forward.
Eventually, I walked so slowly that I was joined by some friends who were latecomers. We finished the race together in a group. Since the rule is to advance alone, of course, the training was a failure.
The adults at the finish line laughed at me and said, "That's cheating," but I resented the adults who were enjoying this project, saying, "It's just too scary, you bastard. Perhaps it was because the adults were looking down at us with the moonlight in the background, but the image of the adults' faces dark and unable to see their expressions clearly is burned into my brain so strongly.

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However, the camp as a whole was fun, and although I resented them, I did not classify it as a bad memory.

Since the memories of those days remained somehow strong in my mind, I decided to go to Hachijojima after discussing with my wife that it would be a good place to spend summer with my children after Corona.

I decided to go there after discussing it with my wife.
We were traveling with two elementary school children. If we didn't move around, we would soon have too much time on our hands and start playing Switch or watching YouTube. We had the rental car running at full capacity, taking them to the beach, mountains, and hot springs.

One of the itineraries was a "night insect collecting" event at the Hachijo Visitor Center.

The Hachijo Visitor Center is located in the Botanical Park adjacent to the airport and is a facility that displays and introduces the nature, history, and culture of Hachijo Island.
In addition to museum exhibits, the center also holds various events, such as a tour to observe the famous glowing mushroom "yakotake" and a Hachijo drumming experience.

Visitors come to a place that is rich in nature for leisure. I decided to join the "Night Insect Collecting" tour, thinking that children would be stimulated by such an unusual event in the pitch-dark forest of a nature park on top of the unusual.

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The day of the tour.
We arrived at the Visitor Center in the dark of night.
We parked our car in a nearby parking lot and headed for the venue. It was pitch-dark, so the LED headlamps I had bought for this trip were a big help. It illuminated the feet of two people with plenty of light to spare. We gave the same equipment to the children, and they were all ready to go. Everyone's spirits were rising.
We arrived a little early, but soon several groups of children arrived one after another. Eighty percent of them were local children. About 20% were tourists.
When all the participating groups gathered, we received a light lecture from the curator on "what insects are" and "precautions.

We were not to be unleashed into the park in total darkness. The curator had prepared several points for us to catch insects, and we were to walk around the park with the curator to those points.

As soon as we departed, we saw a large insect trap near the entrance of the visitor center.
The trap was a "light trap" with a 1.5-meter-long white cloth spread out and a light shining from the back. The light attracts insects and they are attracted to the cloth, so the traps were supposed to be full of insects by the time we had circled the park.

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Most of the street lights in the park are LED, but only the lights illuminating the fabric are fluorescent. Most of the insects attracted by the light are not heading toward the light, but fly toward the ultraviolet light (positive traveling nature). However, LED light emits very little ultraviolet light, so fluorescent light, which emits ultraviolet light, is appropriate for this insect trap, and LED light cannot be used for this trap.

I was surprised, because I know nothing about insect collecting except swinging an insect net around.

Insects can see ultraviolet light, but humans cannot.
On the other hand, humans can see LED light, but insects cannot.
Dogs and cats see the world in black and white, and butterflies see a much wider range of light than we do, and see the world in more colors than we do.
I knew this as knowledge, but I never thought I would actually be able to experience in this way that "different creatures see light in different ways.

Immediately, my imagination was also expanding.

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We humans will be exploring the park with the help of streetlights and headlights, but for the insects on the receiving end, we will be dozing off at night, gazing at the stars, when suddenly a hand reaches out from the darkness and stuffs us into a basket. It is incomprehensible.
The place where human beings walk is so limited that it would be foolish for insects to be in such an obvious place even at night, but it would also be unfair for humans to come looking for them, waving invisible lights around.
But it can't be helped. This is a battle.
A battle between Predator and humankind.

And we are the Predator.
A battle that was decided before it even began. The victory of overwhelming civilization. What an asymmetry. A sense of overwhelming victory.

Needless to say, the children, the Predators, collected rare insects one after another.
They collected insects that thought they were hiding or swarming around the traps at the checkpoints, and their insect trapping baskets were overflowing.

After returning safely to the visitor center, we had a presentation of the insects we had collected.

We finished the presentation by releasing the insects we had collected, relying on the light from the light trap.
The insects we had just released flew back to the big white shiny cloth, and with the light in the background, we made our way back to the parking lot where we had rented a car.

It was late at night, and the children could be heard yawning sleepily.

As I looked at the shadows of the four of them stretching out, I thought to myself that even if they looked into my face now, they would not be able to see me because of the darkness.
・・・・・・

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Incidentally, the title "Illuminare" is derived from the Latin word for illumination, meaning "to brighten" or "to illuminate," and is said to be derived from light (lumen). Illustration and luminescence are also derived from lumen, and are said to be siblings of illuminare.

We would like to invite you to view the "Lights of the Night" by each artist.

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November 2023

CRISPY EGG Gallery

Hirokazu Ishii