Aevum

Go Watanabe
Aevum
2009-2012
Full HD animation (Blu-ray R)
18 min

Born in 1975 in Hyogo, Go Watanabe started out making paintings that questioned “what I am seeing” in the real world, but now — since he felt that this form of expression involving many overlapping layers is out of place — he strives to create in a way that is as flat as possible, continually experimenting with the possibilities of 3DCG (3D computer graphics).

Aevum is a Latin word from Scholastic philosophy that represents the mode of existence of angels and saints. It also expresses the liminal space between the temporal, mortal experience of material beings like us and the eternity, or timelessness, of God.

In this piece, Watanabe created a portrait of an imaginary person with 3DCG and then superimposed aggregated images of the skin of an actual model.
CG consists only of surfaces and has no interiority. This portrait seems to resemble someone, but then it is of no one in particular; it is a nameless portrait that hovers between presence and absence, transience and eternity. Always wavering in a slow rhythm, the face has a presence so real that it feels as if we might even hear its breathing as it looks at us in a steady gaze.

In 100 or 200 years, will human beings exist in the same way as we do now? This piece seems to give us a hint of our future.

(Commentary: Mami Chida / Translation: Yui Kajita)