In 2018, for the project “Sun of the City” in Guangzhou, China, a sundial measuring approximately 150 × 150 cm was created on the grounds of 53 Art Museum. It used the east-facing wall of a building that had once belonged to a railway company, together with a plant stand that had been left on a third-floor balcony.
In 2020, the building was demolished due to the museum’s relocation. I learned about the demolition only shortly beforehand, and had no means of intervening on site, so the sundial was lost together with the rubble. The work “Mirage of Sundial” was created as a way of duplicating this Guangzhou sundial. Demolished buildings are often crushed and reused as construction material. The Guangzhou building was likewise turned into recycled aggregate, and it is possible that part of it has travelled to Japan and become a component of some new building. Based on this imagination, I collected rubble from construction sites in Tokyo and used it to build a temporary virtual wall. On this wall, I drew at full scale the same dial face as the sundial created in Guangzhou in 2018.
“Mirage of Sundial” is neither the original work nor a replica. It is a new work that recreates a single piece in a different form.
Production support: Mitsunori Kimura
Related works:
Sun of the City (Guangzhou)