Bruise (Stain)

2013

Print on a secondhand tablecloth made in 1920’s Germany

86 × 93 cm

Exhibited at

In Search of Critical Imagination, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (2014)

Artist File 2015 Next Doors, The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan (2015)

Bruise (Stain)

The definition of “bruise” in various languages is printed on a secondhand tablecloth made in the 1920’s Germany. The fabric does not look very clean because of the stains on it that show its long history. I became attracted to the fabric made in this era in Germany because of its fine quality. I first saw it in a Sunday market in Berlin. I asked shop staff how old those fabrics were. When she said to me that they were nearly 100 years old I couldn’t believe it. But I eventually came to believe what she told me because shopkeepers in other stores also said the same. Those fabrics are nearly 100 years old and made around 1910-30. Also, I found later that the period was actually before the rise of Nazism and it seemed that the qualities of fabric before and after the rise of Nazism are very different. Since the surprising discovery, as if smitten by their magical allure, I have been collecting this kind of daily-use fabrics that were made prior to 1930.

Photo by

Shintaro Yamanaka