Three Eyes

Three Eyes is one of Kawano's most enigmatic titles, suggesting a composition that moves deliberately beyond naturalistic portraiture into a more symbolic or surrealistic register. Three eyes — one more than the human face possesses — invokes the iconography of divine vision in Buddhist tradition (the third eye of spiritual sight) as well as the visual unsettling of familiar anatomy that characterizes some avant-garde work of the period. The image is likely a face study rendered with an additional eye as a statement about perception, insight, or the uncanny.