Early summer, I was asked the owner of Fellini Gallery in Berlin to write calligraphy on the part of their wall. This gallery encourages many young artists and give them opportunities to exhibit their works. I have done two performances here in the past including “Miminasho Hoichi” performed this April.

It started with cleaning up the wall since there was a very thin paper stuck on the wall and the surface of the wall wasn´t smooth at all. Then I painted the wall in two colours, black and white. Some days were quite windy and I had to chase small pieces of paper flying around the driveway of the gallery. It was quite funny actually.

Here I wrote three phrases from three artists. In the middle, “芸術は爆発だ (geijutsu wa bakuhatsu da)” is one of the most famous phrases of a Japanese avant-garde artist, Taro Okamoto (岡本太郎) and means “Art is an explosion”.  His famous work, Tower of the Sun was created for the Osaka Expo ´70.

On the left, “優れた芸術家は模倣し、偉大な芸術家は盗む (idaina geijutsuka wa mohoushi, idaina geijutsuka wa nusumu)” is a quote from Pablo Picasso and the meaning is “Good artists copy, great artists steal”.

On the right is a quote from a German novelist, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. “芸術家よ語るなかれ。造れ (geijutsuka yo katarunakare. Tsukure)” means “Don´t talk, artists. Create!”.

I had chosen these three thinking they would be perfect for an art gallery, especially where many potential young artists are working. The video was filmed when I was writing the second quote of Picasso. Thank to a gallery assistant, Sung-yong for filming my work.