Shingo Tanaka (b. 1983) has installed his panels so seamlessly into Kyoto's eN arts gallery that the works first appear to be done on the walls. Though having trained as an oil painter, the soft scumblings and wisps of smoke and licks of fire in a restricted palette of black and ochres on white background, are not in fact painted at all. Fire itself is Tanaka's primary medium.
A square sheet of paper is hammered into place on the wall with two nails. It doesn't rest flat but hovers slightly away from the vertical surface. The paper is then lit from the bottom, and as it burns, it begins to curl upward. Flames and smoke snake up high and singe the white panel — this is Tanaka's take on capturing the ephemera of fire.
The results for individual works are never identical, though they carry something of a family resemblance in the shadowy traces of the burned square of paper in "Rise (test piece #02)" (2012) and in the flaring singe marks that soar up at right and left at the top of the paper, which can also be seen in various other works.
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