龍雲図 - Dragon Cloud

In Zen temples, dragons are guardian gods and are considered to be creatures that bring rain of Buddhist Dharma to the monks. I am pleased to present the second installment of this series, Dragon Cloud, which challenges the depiction of a “dragon showering the rain of the Buddha's dharma” uniquely suited to the modern era. This work employs nonlinear physical systems, digital imaging technology, and sound based on brain science.

This work will be installed as a counterpart to Junsaku Koizumi’s Cloud Dragon painted on the ceiling of the Dharma Hall of Kenchoji Temple. Another challenge is to submit a unique type of inheritance in the 2020s of the ancient Japanese aesthetic of "kasane," "utsushi," and "nazorae". What does it mean to depict Junsaku Koizumi’s "Cloud Dragon" in Akira Wakita’s own way? After a thorough investigation, I decided that it was not simply a matter of processing a digital scan of Koizumi’s painting, but to depict the phenomena and principles behind the act of looking at the dragons, the presence of the scene. Also, as an homage to Koizumi’s technique, I projected Sumi (Japanese Black Paint) image on the screen and painted layers and layers of white particles on top of it, aiming to create colors, shapes, and movements that are neither simply white nor simply grainy, but have depth and breadth.

We may see a tripartite conversation across science, art, and religion in the phenomenon of a nonlinear dynamical system creating a dragon. The shift from "emptiness to completeness and from completeness to emptiness" created by a simple system resonates with the world of Zen, where all is one and one is all.