Tracing back to the Neolithic period in East Asia, the dragon has long functioned as a symbolic mediator connecting water, forest, and sky, embodying circulation, regeneration, and balance with nature rather than conquest. Over extended periods of time, it has shaped a worldview grounded in environmental harmony and continuity. By contrast, within European history, the dragon has often been depicted as a symbol of chaos or threat, positioned as an entity to be overcome. This exhibition stands at the point where these differing historical lineages intersect, re-presenting the dragon as a symbol of circulation and coexistence. Using the dragon as a symbolic system through which its ideological background is traced historically, this process provides a conceptual framework for translating introspective inquiry into visual expression. Within this framework, the artist’s own position is articulated—situated within cycles that traverse the visible and the invisible, the past and the present, Europe and Japan. To present the dragon here and now is both an act of artistic articulation and a quiet gesture of sharing, shaped by the hope that the cycles sustaining clear water and living forests will continue to be carried forward into the future.
