The title references the work of the outstanding Japanese landscape artist Utagawa “Ando” Hiroshige (1797–1858), one of the last great masters of ukiyo‑e. In the final three years of his life, he devoted himself to creating the print series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Japanese: Meisho Edo Hyakkei). The prints depicting scenes of the great city brought the artist worldwide fame and had a significant impact on global art. Taking up the weight of the great name from the late master, the artist continues his mission of capturing the world, shifting the principle of “one hundred views” from the geographical realm to the mental one.
Hiroshige explores images from contemporary mass culture, anime, folklore, and Eastern spiritual practices. Vladivostok, situated at the intersection of Russian and Asian cultural spaces, becomes a natural venue for such transcultural experiments.
The artist transforms the workshop space of the art residency (formerly the central repair shop of the Zarya garment factory) into the abode of the Tantric Instructor, who presides over the protocols for achieving Enlightenment. Instructions and emergency exit plans from the Wheel of Death and Rebirth are literally burned into the wooden panels. The Tantric Instructor appears at the Factory less and less often, but numerous wide‑open eyes of magical girls and other entities gaze upon the visitors. Whether the hundred views of the mind are illusory or not, deliverance from suffering is inevitable under their gaze.
