Whale shark

"What looks like the surface of the sea to humans,

is roughly the ceiling of the air to the fish living below."

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower" has been the first impression Shingu Shigeo, hailed as the "Artist of Wind" for many years, has brought to the public through his creations. His works, even after twenty years, remain timeless, always illuminating the reader's vision and prompting them to wander beyond the pages, strolling leisurely along the natural orbit constructed by aesthetics.

Last time, after "dissecting" the universe of "Strawberries," he now leads us into the deep, vast ocean, allowing our senses to float in a tidal space, swaying like a cradle, with light, fish, seaweed, and occasionally swirling dust and pebbles, as the water undulates, our ear canals filled with the almost vacuum-silent rustling sounds... Then, a violent force impacts, and a massive creature glides by, unhurriedly and gracefully—

"The whale shark, the largest existing fish on Earth, measures about eighteen meters in length and is said to weigh up to forty metric tons. They slowly swim through warm currents around the world, consuming plankton at a speed close to that of a walking human (an average of four kilometers per hour). Fishermen of the past loved to see whale sharks appear because it was a symbol of abundant catches." (Excerpt from the afterword of "Whale Shark," Shingu Shigeo)

In a blue world that changes as steadily as velvet or the night sky, our gaze inevitably switches continuously with Shingu Shigeo's black lines and dots: looking up, birds-eye view, eye-level; at times zooming in on the whale shark's snow-white belly, at other times observing its overall snowflake-like back from afar; in the blink of an eye, transforming into Pinocchio about to be swallowed, then instantly returning to being a tiny human lingering beside it...

Within the brisk square format, it's like having viewed a magnificent, almost surreal miniature time-lapse documentary, constantly peeking, exploring, and understanding the whale shark in a poetic way, as well as all the immense marvels that this water-enveloped planet can contain and hold deep within.