Countless fine lines fill the dark field, tangling, loosening, and changing density as they form a broad undulation. Moving from pale open space into a deep brown-black area, the image remains abstract while suggesting sensations of the night sky, clouds, and gravity. This 2009 work belongs to Kabata's continuing practice of building images through accumulated ballpoint-pen lines.
At night, the close of a day, stars of overwhelming mass appear above our heads. In this work, countless layers of ballpoint-pen lines depict the accumulation of a day's time and the density of a world invisible in daylight. The work grew from the sensation of passing through the night while bearing the weight of innumerable stars overhead.
Chihiro Kabata completed the oil painting course in the master's program at Musashino Art University and teaches in the Department of Art at Wako University. She works both with paintings made directly by hand and finger without brushes, and with ballpoint-pen drawings built from layered lines; recent projects also use mirrors, water, and video. This work is presented in the context of her early ballpoint-pen drawings, in which repeated lines generate both image and space.