Color on Colors

Satoshi Uchiumi, Japanese abstract painter, believes that the beauty of painting lies within paint itself. He has pursued beauty by painting thousands of colored dots. He has also become known for his ability to highlight the relationship between the artwork, the exhibition space, and the viewer.

This documentary reveals the process of his major early work, Under the Colors, which was first exhibited at MACA Gallery in Tokyo in 2004. The size of this painting is 380 cm x 1700 cm (approximately 150 x 670 inches), and he spent six months finishing the piece. Instead of working on a single, large canvas, he painted on smaller canvases, and then combined them into one in the exhibition space. Since he worked in a small studio, he had no chance to view the entire piece until he installed. During the process, he patiently kept putting paint on the canvases repeatedly.

Filmmaker Rima Yamazaki visited the artist’s studio to document the art-making process every two weeks. This film was shot in an observational style.