KEEP OUT Folding Screen

KEEP OUT Folding Screen

2014

Four-panel folding screen

Eight pieces of keep out signs, Gold paint, Hinge, etc

Both left and right panels eight keep out signboards Left and right screens 123.8 x 163.8 cm each

This folding screen piece was displayed in a luxury department store gallery. The gallery contains a door that connects with the ‘salon for wealthy Gaisho customers’. (Gaisho means ‘external customers’, a kind of personal shopping service where the Japanese department store’s sales clerks visit the home of their loyal customers to take their orders.) For many people including myself, it's a one-way space to keep out of. Everyone who visits the gallery, even if they do not know the situation, senses this unspoken rule in the atmosphere, never attempting to cross over to the other side. I created my kind of response to this strange magnetic field. I thinly painted gold onto keep out signs found in today's Japan that have been put up for various situations, and installed them as a folding screen on both sides of the opening. At first glance the piece seems like a majestic gold folding screen, appropriate for a department store gallery, yet once the viewer moves closer the design of the keep out signage becomes visible.

*Although the salon door is closed in the image, it is usually open. (The staff closed the door when I tried to photograph it.) A former department store gaisho advised me in creating this piece.