Red Slash

Red Slash is one of a series of small size canvas works which depict the number 8 in Japanese written as 八 (hachi). 八 is also the symbol of Nagoya City, the industrial city of Japan where the Toyota factory is located.  八 is a colourful series where each work is painted only with one colour pointing to the colourful yet compartmented social structure of the Japanese society. The highly standardised and uniformized character of the Nagoya city is aesthetically distorted in Dion’s work through his highly abstract, uneven forms of 八 painted with the same colour as the background yet, with a colour tone that creates high contrast with it. In Dion’s canvas 八 loses its plenitude. The seemingly random, limited movement of one side of the symbol inside the canvas and the restless orientation of the other side of the symbol that is often surging out of the canvas is a perfect metaphor for Japanese split subjects who on one hand try to be in harmony with the society, on the other hand, who miss their individual voice and dream of an outsider life. Dion is telling the uneasy story of the human being in Japan in an almost funny and colourful way expressing his own personality and in a simple, minimalistic way that perfectly fits the Japanese aesthetic, once again illustrating the contrast in between the society and its individuals.