Next Exhibition:
GROUP EXHIBITION
■ARTISTS
Kenshu SHINTSUBO｜ Masaru TATSUKI×KYOTARO
Yohei KICHIRAKU｜Hideo ANZE ｜Ryohichi FUJISAKI
■VENUE
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY
3-9-11 Minami Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0047 JAPAN
■PERIOD
March 27th (Friday) - May 2nd (Saturday) 2015
hrs: 12.00-19.00 * Closed Sundays, Mondays & National Holidays
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY is pleased to announce is very first exhibition, "transcripts/memories" from Friday March 27th, 2015. This group exhibition introduces five artists who choose photography as their medium of expression, and focuses on two characteristics of photography; transcribing (documenting) and memorizing.
Kenshu SHINTSUBO will exhibit selected images from his recent series, which transcribe the remains of acts of his own and others.
A photographic work which documents a drawing on a blackboard by Takashi IKEGAMI (Researcher of complex systems and artificial life, Professor of the University of Tokyo), a video work compressing thousands of images taken for three years since the disaster in 2011 for the magazine Shiso Chizu (philosophical map) β, and photography works of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant which had to be taken avoiding the monitoring cameras, would all be exhibited together. Each image relate to each other and evoke layers of memories as well as actualization of visibility towards its viewers.
© Kenshu SHINTSUBO
20121028_1641_Meguro-ku_Drawing_Takashi-Ikegami
type c print, 2012
courtesy KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY
© Masaru Tatsuki × Kyotaro
SHIKASHIN
type c print, pencil on paper, panel, 2013
photo: Kenji Fujimaki
with thanks to: GALLERY SIDE 2, MIZUMA ART GALLERY
Masaru TATSUKI×KYOTARO is a unit formed by Kimura Ihei Photographic Award winner Masaru TATSUKI and drawing artist KYOTARO. Their artwork are created under a collaborative process of KYOTARO first selecting the straightforward images taken by TATSUKI which deeply and purely communicate its the object. With her discerning eye KYOTARO chooses the image strongest amongst all which protrude beyond its framing, and then draws with her pencil of what she sees.
SHIKASHIN is an artwork featuring the costume of Shishi Odori (Deer Dance), a traditional folk dance in the Iwate prefecture (Northern Japan). Shishi Odori (Deer Dance) begun in the Edo period, and this ancient costume of the Natsuyashika Odori kept away in a cottage deep in the woods was re-discovered by Tatsuki. Deer were believed as god in the region, and its costume connotes hundreds of years of prayers as well as accumulated time used in the ceremonies, and exemplifies the memories of “beliefs” as well as “living” of the people.
Yohei KICHIRAKU’s fireworks is a series which he collects people playing with fireworks. The works interact with the viewers’ past memories, and scents of Japanese summer erode from the surface of each images.
The composition and distance contribute to this; for example the photographs taken at night make the location non-attributive, and the certain distance been kept with the people make their faces non-distinguishable and allow the viewers imagine and overlap their own memories - however, strongest amongst all must be the act of “playing fireworks” being the common ground of people within the Japanese culture, as a shared past memory.
The works exemplify the beautifulness and brevity of the fire, the extraordinary time of summer vacation, the joy and uplifting exaltation of gathering with friends and family, as well as the vanity and transitory of its ending to come.
© Yohei KICHIRAKU
fireworks series
lightjet print, plexiglass
2011
© Hideo ANZE, courtesy KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY
Hideo ANZE’s Stripe (50Hz) is a new series by the artist, where he intentionally collects vertical stripe patterns of the flicker phenomenon, which appear when a fluorescent light is captured by a digital camera.
The artist lives in the power-supply frequency area of 50Hz, which electricity is provided by TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc.), Hokkaido Electric Power Co., Inc. and Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc. (meaning areas of Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima, Yamanashi, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, partial of Nagano and partial of Shizuoka). Since he started the series on April 4th, 2014, artworks are almost daily been uploaded on his twitter account.
The works could be defined as a collection of transcribed lights created by Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc., where electricity is provided as was before after the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident.
© Ryoichi FUJISAKI
courtesy KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY
Ryoichi FUJISAKI’s colored oil series is a photographic work documenting the transformation of states and colors, when mixing liquid and substances surrounding the artist’s daily life.
Although all close being around the artist’s daily life, each substances would have never naturally met if the artist did not intend to, making them swaying in between the state of “intended” and “unintended” each and every second. Purely and tenaciously, the works become a documentation of the unintended moments however created in a sense intendedly.
Ryoichi FUJISAKI was born in Osaka, 1975. After completing M.A. at Kyoto City University of Arts Department of Sculpture, he has worked as the core member of SANDWICH contributing to Kohei NAWA’s works as the head of techniques team. He began his own artistic career from 2015, with his first solo exhibition held at CC4441 in February 2015.
Transcribing and memorizing may seem alike at first sight, however completely differentiate in terms of transcribing depending on science, while memorizing is a phenomenon which occur only to livings creatures.
What makes the medium of photography stand out from the other vast selection of art mediums must be its uniqueness depending its presentation to chemistry. Paul Strand mentioned that that is why photography retains its unique objectiveness, and it could be because of such objectiveness that such features of transcribing and memorizing of photography are attained.
We hope this exhibition collecting works of five different expressions by the artists each exemplifying the transcribing/memorizing features of photography will inspire you in its own way.