GROUP EXHIBITION
Urbanism—Cityscapes/Residences
Ryota Kikuchi | Rui Mizuki | Jérémie Souteyrat | Noritaka Minami
■Venue
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY
3-9-11 Minami Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0047 JAPAN
■Period
November 21st (Sat) - December 26th (Sat) 2015
Closed on Sun, Mon, National Holidays
■Hours
12.00 noon - 19.00 pm
== OPENING RECEPTION ==
Saturday, November 21st
18:00-20:00
KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY is pleased to announce our next exhibition “Urbanism—Cityscapes/Residences”, a group show featuring four photography artists from Japan and worldwide. In order to comprehend the vague overview of the framing of “urbanism,” this exhibition will feature works of four artists who select “cityscapes” or “residences” as their main photographic object.
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Ryota Kikuchi was born 1981 in Chiba, Japan. He currently continues his studies at Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate course of Intermedia art. Utilizing his ability and experience as a free-climber, he climbs up various public spaces and captivates himself in a photograph, allowing us to realize new ways of viewing urban-scenes and landscapes which we have been thinking we fully know. For example, lampposts and monuments, clocktowers and traffic signs stand there fulfilling their duties, however half-eliminated automatically from our minds. What Kikuchi exhibits could be the presence of such vague and invisible border line, standing there in between.
Rui Mizuki was born 1983 in Kyoto, Japan. He graduated Kyoto City University of Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, Urushi Lacquering Course in 2006, and completed his studies in Kyoto City University of Arts Graduate School, Concept and Media Planning course in 2013. Recent exhibitions include PARASOPHIA: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture special related program still moving (2015), NIPPON NOW Junge japanische Kunst und das Rheinland (2014) and others.
Using photography as his vehicle of expression, Mizuki describes perceptions of subculture and street-culture, and converts them into topics such as "public systems" with his works. Flight in the cage series are created by first photographing a "bird in a cage" in a nearby public zoo, then projects the image to the ramp in a public skate park, and then becomes recaptured in 2D photography. By tactfully layering motifs such as the "society" and the "skateboard," he succeeds to visualizes the structure of “repression.”
Jérémie Souteyrat was born 1979 in France. Currently living in Tokyo, he works as a photographer for various publishers around the globe including Guardian Magazine (UK), Wall Street Journal (US), The Yomiuri Shimbun (Jp), Le Monde (Fr), Le Figaro (Fr), Aera (Jp), Courrier Japon and International (Jp, Fr) to name a few. His first monograph tokyo no ie was published from Le Lézard Noir (France), and its Japanese edition is scheduled to be published shortly from SEIGENSHA Art Publishing (Japan) this winter.
His tokyo no ie series captures residences in Tokyo designed by renown architects, however freeing them from the so-called "architectural photography." Purely maintaining its state of "Tokyo cityscapes with their residential houses," his photographs allow us to witness the houses to blend in and breath with its dwellers, as though they are enjoying their new lives.
Noritaka Minami was born 1981 in Osaka, Japan, and currently lives and works in Chicago. Completing B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, and M.F.A at University of California, Irvine, he currently is an Assistant Professor of Photography in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Loyola University Chicago. Solo exhibitions include UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design, and Griffin Museum of Photography. His first monograph 1972: Nakagin Capsule Tower was published fall 2015 from German art publisher KEHRER.
In this project Minami continued photographing interiors of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, a building composed with 140 removable apartment unit by architect Kisho Kurokawa in 1972. Although it embodied the future of urban living for businessmen as envisioned by Kurokawa at that moment in postwar Japan, today the building faces the threat of demolition to make way for a conventional apartment complex. Minami's photographs allow us to visualize how the future vision looked like in the past, and after 40 years, how each units could evolve themselves according to which habitant/owner they encountered.
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Although cities are places with live in, and “urbanism” is a word involving all of us in this world, the concept may still remain vague in visualiy as details and scales of the city would keep evolving every each second.
We hope this exhibition introducing photography works of artists from Japan and worldwide would allow us new discovery and comprehension of such theme.