Plush

Dreams of pləSH
Series 2 > Paper & Ink 5 60cm x 40cm / 2 Paper & Inks 2 > 60cm x 60cm

Transitional objects, or the release of children’s dreams and nightmares buried within their stuffed toys.
This series consists of medium-format works (A2/A1).
My initial impulse (post-Echoplasme) came from a desire to work in larger formats with a theme other than Yōkai.
The Echoplasme series was created with very limited means during the first lockdown.

For that earlier series, I built tools that prevented me from seeing what I was painting, allowing me to remain fully within the gesture and its traces.
For this new large-format series, I needed to develop new tools that were more suited to its scale.

The idea of using plush toys came to me in a thrift shop, at a time when I had no access to proper waste disposal in the rural region where I had just relocated.
I felt as though I had rediscovered old companions—those who had followed me on stage during my noisy-pop period in the early 1990s.

Reflecting on the meaning of this combination—ink, paper, plush—the concept of the transitional object became immediately evident.
Releasing (unbinding) through ink and gesture the childhood dreams and nightmares stored within a stuffed toy also resonated with the story recently revealed by a friend who had been abused for many years.