Study of emotion
The cycle’s inspiration lies in psychology.
Everyone has a rich inner emotional world. Everyone is at the centre of their own story, with their own heroes and villains, plot twists, struggles and successes.
According to the American Psychological Association, emotion is defined as “a complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioural and physiological elements.” Emotions are how individuals deal with matters or situations they find personally significant. Emotional experiences have three components: a subjective experience, a physiological response and a behavioural or expressive response.
Subjective experiences can range from something as simple as seeing a colour to something as major as getting married. No matter how intense the experience is, it can provoke many emotions in a single individual and the emotions each individual feel may be different. I wonder what you feel when looking at paintings from the cycle Study of Emotion…
Artworks in this series are minimalistic. They are painted with only two contrasting and luxurious colours, gold and black. The gold is smooth and shiny. It usually stays in a rectangle shape. The black is dynamic, it is really opaque black. I have used “Musou Black” paint, which can reportedly absorb 99.4% of visible light. They play together in different ways: fighting for domination, changing places, finding themselves in various situations including achieving balance.
Social psychologist Fritz Heider in 1946 explained that a balance must exist between interpersonal relationships, or for something specific between two or more individuals, so that psychological harmony can be achieved. Imbalanced structures are associated with uncomfortable feelings, and this is what leads people to seek to achieve balance.
According to Paul Ekman, pioneer in the study of emotions who developed the wheel of emotion,
“It would be very dangerous if we didn’t have emotions. It would also be a very dull life. Because, basically, our emotions drive us — excitement, pleasure, even anger.”
Ekman
That is why it’s important that we’re able to understand emotions as they play such an important role in how we behave.