Public: In sociology, that widely dispersed but collective body of people who form general opinions via indirect means of communication such as mass media. (From the Köjien Japanese dictionary).

dark image. This place of very private cubicles separated from one another only by thin partition panels fairly tingles with misgivings that something is always just about to happen. While we set foot here for the wholly irrational act of excretion – euphemistically, “going to the restroom” – the enclosed spaces actually lend themselves to a wide range
of uses.

In order to preserve our own space in such a place, we tend to feign lack of interest in others’ privacy, yet events in the mirror still fix themselves clearly and calmly in our retinae.

I discovered certain commonalities between these actions and my own attitude in using the Internet. I know full well something is happening, yet I maintain the guise of an aloof stranger even as I peer into a 30-cm-square screen. Untold hands scrawl each respective cubicle with anonymous messages like BBS website postings toward unspecified multitudes.

Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo
http://www.gallerykoyanagi.com/index.html
James Cohan Gallery, New York
http://www.jamescohan.com/artists/tabaimo/

Portrait: Rieko Shiga, courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi and James Cohan Gallery