down4u

Ritsuki Fujisaki Gallery / Tokyo, Japan
Jul 16 – Aug 14, 2022

All along the shower floor, there’s hair. Long sinewy lines point towards the drain, where the hairs resolve in clumps over the tiny black holes. It always bothers me a little, that I can’t see where all this water goes—even more so now that the strands have formed a makeshift web over the drain. Yesterday, I saw a dreamcatcher dangling from a tree. It turned softly in the wind as a shriek erupts from the drain.

What happens to something when it becomes wet? Maybe the truth about wetness is love. I suspect that, at the core of the emotional structure which constitutes wetness, there is a process of self-division that ends in unification. At the microscopic level, I think it resembles cellular folding. It is both steady and resigned at once. The fractaling repeats until it begins to resemble a trembling, silent urgency. 

Again it’s the “running” dream. I recognize the latency in my body immediately. It’s the vectorial vortex where I am continually pained by knowledge that I can move faster than this. I ooze my way through hallway after hallway, each lined with doors that are all slightly open. But I do know that behind the doors, each intentionally varied in coloration and material, there is an interconnected matrix of tunnels. Chutes for delivery. It’s likely they were built to expedite the exchange of medical supplies—is this a hospital? Without having to go inside the rooms, I know from where I am that I can’t pass through these tunnels. They’re too small. But something else can. I think it’s the malicious presence, or the reason I am “running”. Something echoes inside of these tunnels, but I don’t know yet what this dream stage is asking me to reveal about myself before I can progress further.

Because it frightens me, I become more likely to notice. Because it frightens me, we have now established a connection. Fear demands me to notice, sticking to me, like wet hair to a face. Horror is a kind of intimacy. I think I saw something, but did I imagine that? It’s not the imagination that frightens, I don’t think. What truly drives fear into my body is the possibility for my imagination to amass physical weight. There is the low gurgle of water rising in a bath somewhere nearby. My body has not made contact with any water in quite some time.

- Wade Dao
Installation view
Godsend 4, 2022
Hair, concrete, steel, ropes, candle
63 x 15 cm

Godsend 4, 2022
Hair, concrete, steel, ropes, candle
63 x 15 cm
Godsend 4, 2022
Hair, concrete, steel, ropes, candle
63 x 15 cm
Installation view
Installation view
Installation view
Watercolor (drain 1),  2022
Wooden frame, aluminum, steel, stone clay
25 x 22 cm
Watercolor (drain 1), 2022
Wooden frame, aluminum, steel, stone clay
25 x 22 cm
Watercolor (drain 2), 2022
Wooden frame, aluminum, steel, stone clay
25 x 22 cm
Watercolor (drain 2), 2022
Wooden frame, aluminum, steel, stone clay
25 x 22 cm
Watercolor (drain 2), 2022
Wooden frame, aluminum, steel, stone clay
25 x 22 cm
Once the heart is dead there’s nothing left, 2022
Concrete, stainless steel, LED
Dimensions variable
Once the heart is dead there’s nothing left, 2022
Concrete, stainless steel, LED
Dimensions variable
Once the heart is dead there’s nothing left, 2022
Concrete, stainless steel, LED
Dimensions variable
Installation view
Watercolor (hair), 2022
Aluminum plated print
15 x 12 cm
Watercolor (hair), 2022
Aluminum plated print
15 x 12 cm
Watercolor (rain), 2022
Wooden frame, aluminum, steel, stone clay
34 x 18.5 cm
Watercolor (rain), 2022
Wooden frame, aluminum, steel, stone clay
34 x 18.5 cm