The Cards tell You Nothing but a Life for Second, 2016, 45 × 31 cm
Something Fallen From the Sky in S. City, 2016, 21 × 29,5 cm
Kei Takemura
Which Year was the Most Beautiful
25.03.–22.04.2017
Ebensperger Graz
In a temporary pinned Country
Perhaps everyone just wishes to pray.
Such was the thought that had come to my mind when the automatic doors of the pachinko parlor opened to reveal people sitting with their backs all lined in a row. It was a brief moment I had experienced upon returning to Tokyo after a while of being away.
It was not the first time that I had felt this way. I had felt the same way more than 20 years ago, when my best friend T had told me about how her mother would be absorbed in fortunetelling for hours on end using playing cards. She had been a woman with a beautiful demeanor and an atmosphere about her as if seemingly uninterested in children.
From before U was born in Berlin I would also spend my spare time fortunetelling with playing cards, indeed because I had found the particular expression on T’s mother’s face to be uncannily beautiful. At one time however, U had taken the cards I was playing with in a fleeting second when I wasn’t looking, and proceeded to fold them and draw on them, adding his own personal touches. Upon asking him why he had done this, he simply replied with a serious look and told me that the numbers of a certain card were bad or did not have enough lines.
There is a part of me that believes that what is bread in the bone will never come out of the flesh, and I considered that perhaps there was something he was able to see that I myself could not, thus without reprimand I had left him to do as he pleased. In good spirits, from then on forth whenever I would use a new set of cards, he again took the liberty of bringing them to his own space and doing whatever work he felt needed to be done, in other words, make his own mark on the cards.
Hamburg, 1996
When I was with A.S. trying to cross a quiet road close to the central station, he picked up a Jack of Diamonds that lay in the center of the road and had handed it to me. He approached the card and picked it up with such an air of confidence that I almost felt as if he had originally left it in that place himself.
Berlin, 2005
It was the time when I had been searching for an apartment, as I was in need of leaving the madness of a house on Bruesseler Street. I had gone to see the apartment that stood facing onto Chaussee Street with its busy bustled of traffic, for I was attracted to the fact that it was –as one would say in Japan– located on the second floor and had a balcony. When stepping out onto the balcony, I found a Jack of Diamonds lying on the deck. Naturally, I had made the decision to move into that apartment.