"Red Dot Supremacy"

For the past two years, I have been creating and thinking about works related to red dot stickers. When I think about these stickers, they increasingly appear to me as a drop of blood falling in the gap between the commercial and public aspects of a gallery. This is not blood in the sense of pain or suffering. It is closer to blood in terms of genetic expression, emphasizing individuality.

When I incorporated red dot stickers into my work, I entrusted them with the relationship of "sold = value." By placing these stickers, I forced, proved, and encouraged the understanding of value. However, fundamentally, value is not determined by the transaction of being sold. Value arises only in the objects or concepts owned by individuals or groups, and it is socially determined as a price through exchanges between those who understand it. In other words, I realized that without ownership, value cannot be created. Since then, I have focused on "ownership."

Even while walking through the city, everything in sight has an owner. Houses, roads, cars, stations, shops, schools, companies, and so on. It is more challenging to find things that are not owned. Furthermore, most of humanity belongs to a country, is owned by that country, and holds a mutual ownership relationship with it. Plants and animals may appear unowned, but they are effectively owned by the landowners or countries they belong to. Although the term "res nullius" (unowned property) exists, one cannot freely move trash found on the street to another place, acknowledging it as the property of the country where it exists. Thus, it seems that only distant, shimmering stars are completely unowned.

Thinking about why humanity is so obsessed with ownership, I believe it is because of the thought process that affirms the existence of the future. Everyone has plans for tomorrow, and even without plans, no one thinks that tomorrow will not come. If there is a tomorrow, there will be a day after tomorrow, a week later, a month later, a year later, ten years later, and people live while faintly imagining the future. This belief in the future leads to a way of life that customizes ownership according to time and space.

Ownership is a method for people to survive, but there is also a mechanism to convert it into other forms of ownership. Currency, money, takes on this role. Money itself is a tool that can only be used for exchange. This money has created a world where countless conversions occur at high speed. Furthermore, it has taken a central position in the common understanding of people, giving rise to "capitalism," which continually digests the world into a comprehensible form.

In such a world, galleries operate modestly. Despite the modern expectation that purchased goods are immediately taken home and consumed, galleries maintain the display throughout the exhibition, which I find amusing and intriguing. Both buyers and sellers cannot survive without continuing the cycle of ownership, but the slightly slower rotation of the gallery system makes it an ideal place to recognize ownership. In such a space, I advocate for Red Dot Supremacy. I earnestly hope that humanity, with all its varied experiences of ownership, will come to own my works. Because I, too, have countless things I want to own.