The Lady within the Bubble – The Pictures of Eduardo Fujii

“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”
— Salvador Dalí

Suspended Grace, Paris, France, 2010

I didn’t intend to trigger a scene that afternoon in Paris. I solely wished to take a seat quietly by the Tuileries fountain, let the sunshine do its common Parisian magic, and watch life unfold with that gradual, syrupy grace town reserves for days when nobody is in a rush.

But then she appeared—my floating ballerina.

Not within the common manner performers arrive, with warm-up baggage and a stretch routine, however suspended inside a glassy sphere, as if she’d been conjured by an overconfident road magician or borrowed straight from Melvin Sokolsky’s desires. She hovered over the pond, glowing like a misplaced moon, dancing a gradual pirouette whereas the remainder of us pretended this was a superbly regular factor to witness on a mean Thursday.

What struck me most, nevertheless, wasn’t her magnificence or the surreal spacecraft she traveled in; it was the individuals round me. Everyone carried on as if Paris usually delivered ladies in bubbles, freshly ironed tutus and all, through crane from the sky. A person to my left sipped his espresso. A lady subsequent to him lit a cigarette. Someone else scrolled on their telephone. Civilization endured.

Yet there she was: a bubble-bound apparition spinning gently over the water, reminding me that the absurd and the chic are sometimes separated solely by the thickness of a cleaning soap movie.

As she floated, the delicate nightfall settled over the Louvre’s silhouette, mottling the sky with that smoky, painterly texture I all the time really feel moderately than see. The complete scene unfurled like a reminiscence that wasn’t mine, dreamlike, unfinished, barely unhinged, and fully marvelous.

These are the pictures I chase. Or maybe the pictures chase me. They materialize in fragments: a ballerina, a crane cable, a historic skyline, and a imprecise suspicion that one thing unattainable is about to occur. My job is solely to assemble the items right into a world the place the unbelievable feels not solely believable, however inevitable.

Because I’ve all the time believed that artwork isn’t merely about depicting what I’ve seen. It’s about revealing what insists on current, these inside visions that refuse to remain politely within the thoughts. And so I sew the actual with the unreal, the whimsical with the melancholic, hoping that if I go away the seams seen, viewers will step inside and discover their very own model of the story.

As for the ballerina, she ultimately drifted towards the far finish of the pond, disappeared from my line of sight, and, if I’m being trustworthy, I’m not fully positive she ever landed. Paris is hard that manner. It hides its magic in plain sight and allows you to determine whether or not you need to imagine it.

I all the time do.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work emerges from the friction between reminiscence, creativeness, and a need to rework the strange into the extraordinary. I construct cinematic scenes from a number of photos, textures, and fleeting visible impressions, these half-formed concepts that appear as if ghosts on the fringe of consciousness. I invite viewers into worlds the place the boundaries between actuality and the surreal blur, however the emotional fact stays clear. Art, for me, is as important as breath, a crucial approach to reclaim surprise and share the quiet however persistent tales that form my inside world.