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Shinichiro Uchikura Solo Exhibition

“My Portrait”

■Venue

■Period

​■Hours

KANA KAWANISHI PHOTOGRAPHY

2-7-5-5F, Nishiazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0031
Saturday, September 26th, 2020 - Saturday, November 7th, 2020

Wednesdays through Fridays, 13:00-20:00 | Saturdays, 12:00-19:00

(closed on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and National Holidays)

from the series My Portrait
2019 | archival pigment print | ©︎ Shinichiro Uchikura, courtesy KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY

KANA KAWANISHI PHOTOGRAPHY is pleased to announce the opening of Shinichiro Uchikura’s Solo Exhibition, My Portrait, on Saturday, September 26th, commemorating the release of his monograph by AKAAKA Art Publishing Inc. 

Standing in front of a black background are general people, whose professions are not to stand in front of the camera. Under natural light, Uchikura takes hundreds of continuous shots of these people, capturing the unpredictable moments of when their unprecedented presences appear in the photographs. 

 

If the definition of a good portrait is to project the “known personality” that one has accumulated through their life, this work may be different from that. Although the works were taken through a totally conservative process in terms of its technique, the photographs each have a unique texture, connoting a sign of presence that perhaps only photographs can imply in themselves which results in magnetically drawing the viewers. 

 

The exhibition will disclose the profoundly deep world of portrait photography, that could be experienced only by physically looking at the prints themselves. We look forward to welcoming all to this exhibition along with the monograph that will be released together with the exhibition.

from the series My Portrait
2020 | archival pigment print | ©︎  Shinichiro Uchikura, courtesy KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY

Artist Statement

“My Portrait”

 

I work at a photo studio. 

After I take memorial photographs, I ask my clients if they could model for my artwork. 

Or, I’d sometimes quietly wait for people to pass by and ask if they could model for me. 

In front of the black stage, you stand there, under the sunlight. 

You look at the camera, smile at me, take off your mask, even before I’d ask for anything. 

I continuously take hundreds of shots, at times 500 or 1000, within a short time of a few minutes.

I encounter expressions that I had never imagined, as though they emerged from the unrecognized unconsciousness. 

They are the naked and exposed expressions that a human eye cannot capture.

Or, they are the delicate yet primitive movements of the body. 

While shooting, selecting, and printing, I think.

In the process of selecting the very "you" from the huge number of images,

 

there are times that the firm conviction that “I had captured” would suddenly vanish.

While on the other hand, there are also times that I unexpectedly encounter the “new you” out of the blue. 

Maybe no one has a definite self at all. 

Maybe we all have an infinite version of selves within us. 

I overlay myself on top of “you” like another layer. 

“Me” and “you” appear from the diffusion and fusion of the monochromes. 

They become one photograph, like an unknown presence, which could never be encountered twice. 

“My portrait” is a sculpture that has derived from the countless cuts of the shutter.

And, it is the cumulative love connection  between “me” and “you.”

 

Shinichiro Uchikura 

Artist Profile

Shinichiro Uchikura was born in 1981 in Miyazaki, Japan, and currently resides there after graduating from the Japan Institution of Photography and Film (Osaka)

His major solo exhibitions include Star of November (2018, EMON PHOTO GALLERY, Tokyo), Dog  Soldier Company and Star of November (2018, Kyogeirou G.GALLERY, Taipei), and PORTRAIT (2017, BLOOM GALLERY, Osaka, Japan). Major group exhibitions include 2019 Dali International Photography Exhibition (2019, Dali, China), My Body, Your Body, Their Body (2019, KANA KAWANISHI GALLERY, Tokyo), and The 2nd Ningbo International Photography Week (2017, Ningbo, China), and YP (2017, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Yamanashi, Japan)

Uchikura received the Excellence Award at the 41st New Cosmos of Photography (selector: Tomoko Sawada, 2018),  and was selected as the Excellence Award finalist for the 33rd, 34th, 36th New Cosmos of Photography (selector: Minoru Shimizu, 2010; Katsumi Omori, 2011; and Noi Sawaragi, 2013), the Grand Prize for the 7th EMON AWARDS (2018), and many more. 

His monographs include Star of November (2019) and Collection (2019). His latest monograph My Portrait will be released by AKAAKA Art Publishing Inc. in October 2020.

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