Junpei Hiraoka

Painted clay, colored slip
In Japanese the word “complex” is causally used to describe an inferiority complex or closeness. However, I am aware that in psychology, the term refers to certain types of impulses, desires, and attachments. I have titled my work Complex to reference both of these meanings. ​As an adolescent I attended an evening high school program in the outskirts of Tokyo, and there I felt the impacts of poverty and the imbalanced nature of Japanese society. I often thought about how and why societal systems exist and struggled with this reality. As an outlet to express these thoughts, I have drawn from my background in painting and ceramics and developed this body of work. ​As I made these works I thought about what caused my emotional responses and reflected upon my own “complexes.” I have come to believe that emotions come from an entanglement of belief systems, personal histories, and interactions with different environments. I have attempted to express this mental process of self reflection through my work as “decomposing → re-recognizing → reconstructing.” ​I use the plasticity of clay to express an instinctive, abstract, organic, and constantly changing form of emotion. Then, I carefully coat the body with coloured slip. This process is where I reconstruct my emotions rationally by intentionally controlling the material, colour, and texture by layering slip. ​I believe that such processes, shapes, and colour combinations can express the complexity and accumulation of emotions that lead to such “complexes.” By presenting these ceramic forms of layered slip, I hope to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer, perhaps opening a window to their own inner emotions.