EXHIBITIONS > 2010 > HIKARI

HIKARI - 5 visions of 5 photographers -

The photography enters into the most exciting period it has ever experienced.
The development in digital system dramatically shifts the camera from optical to electronic device, the expression method from chemical film with photographic paper to various styles including liquid crystal displays. The photography seems to be recognized even more important in our time both through structural and qualitative change. Why?

I believe that the photography will continuously fascinate us more with its “quality as never to be expected” and “originality as never to be imagined” in accordance with this drastic change.

This exhibition focuses on five original visions of five photographers actively creating their own works in this epoch-making period, to infiltrate into their photographic force and quality, hidden individually in their works.

The theme is HIKARI, not the “light”. HIKARI, the principal axis, appeared in this present turbulent situation and the goal of photography, is focalized together with "site” and “time”, other two axes sustaining HIKARI.

I wish to discuss about the photography and HIKARI frankly and as much as possible with the visitors of exhibition, to deepen our appreciation on this common and interesting communication.

About 50 works will be exhibited.

Naoko OHTA , GALLERY 21 Curator

 

Eiji IWATA

Born in 1978 in Kobe
Participated in group exhibition “Antipast” in 2009
Participated in the 4th session of “resist” photographic school

Overflowing into the street, light and shadow are constitutive elements in the structure of solid matter. Hunting for a fragment of my floating consciousness while wandering around, I am confronting assorted things.

As I get used to walking heedlessly, it is not rare that, looking around, I finally realize that I have lost my way, being unable to say where I am. Walking around the streets, it is like traveling for a short time, discovering a new world.

Through the aperture of the nonchalant town, statues in deserted alleyway loosen their tongues. Left in town, consciousness becomes a fossil frozen in time, then vision metamorphoses into perception.

As I keep taking photography in the streets, memory and record merge naturally, then I realize that my self exists outside as an object for others. As if existence was effaced, lingering things serve as intermediary in order to unify my memory with the outside world. In this brittle, fragile, vacillating world, record of the town becomes the shadow of heart, emotions are projected as in a mirror. Although the shape is still imperfect, my heart is bewitched by existence which has accumulated time with detachment. I would like to express this particular moment through photography.

Light exists in order to draw the shadow, light shows memory as record. Light and shadow are my memory = the factor which delineates things. Pursuing the shadow is invoking the light. My street exploration travel goes on.

 

Hiroki KISHIMA

Born in 1979
Collection:
French national library (BNF) in 2007

To the supreme - harmony scale

I wish I could change or tune the world surrounding me little by little. A tree, a blue sky without clouds, what a wonderful thing ! I wish we could listen more to the others, we could talk more about love or even soccer, or environment. Such attempt may change atmosphere of the actual daily life and give good echo to the world.
-- 2003

Words far away
So very far away
Flowing feelings

Let's engrave this place into our heart
L'est engrave this landscape into our heart

Deep in my heart
So very deep
Illuminate my heart

Let's play with the light going day
Let's play with the light coming day

-- 2010

 

Koichi NISHIYAMA

Born in 1968 in Yokohama
Actually works in Tokyo
Learnt modern art, performance & installation in the 90's. Concentrates in photography since 2007, under the theme “Absence in scenery”
www.koichinishiyama.com

While now being here, I am aware of your beingness, not now, not here. Enlightening the moment which was the present at that time, I attached it permanently to the biosphere. Back to the source, it came from a sentiment of faithfulness which contained the most gentle and deepest part of myself.
In my case, for example, the starting point could be found in my childhood memory “ I was living in a house near a forest where I could to feel myself connected to the deepest part of the world. But the long process of the destruction of the forest is the only remaining image vivid in my mind”.
Unable to transcend time and place in our today's life, we observe a complete failure of the representation of our epoch, depicted in an excessive and degenerating manner. Silence, which does not require comprehension, intimacy or sharing, is perhaps the most effective way to maintain autonomy and regain confidence in these troubled times. However, in spite of everything, we should continue to believe in our very first intuition. Tying things which have marked our existence all together, we should pursue the isolated tangent point. Even at a disadvantage in this race against clock and before it is too late, let’s loop our short story to universal memory so we can recapture the consistency of the world.
My wish is you can make eternally live your inner instant landing on biosphere and the spectrum of your body, one hundred, one thousand years after its disappearance. The capacity to resist to erosion will always be the prerequisite to what we do create under the name of art or photography. The line illuminated by light is not lonely any more. Now we can see the tip of the things you have tied.

 

Saori TAO

Born in 1980 in Tokyo
Award: Grand prix at“18th Hitotsubo prize”in 2001.
Collection: Kiyosato Photo Museum
Solo exhibitions:
Soma Café, Shibuya in 2001
“Biru ni oyogu” at Ginza Gardian Garden in 2002
Prinz, Kyoto in 2003
“Land of Man” gallery in 2007 　
www.taosaori.com

Enchanted by nature and light, I feel an irresistible impulse to take photography when traveling. A photo should not only be the proof of the place visited but also a very brief encounter with light. Photography is my memory, the emotional instant which belongs hereafter to the past.

I am not sure anymore if what is real in the visited country. There is no common point between Tokyo and the faraway country. In this distant country I had a hallucination about the fact that Tokyo is just in my dream. There is a reality of Tokyo which made me feel that current having traveled is dreamlike in this city.

Warterless river,forest where water overflows, Water that freezes in vast sky and the dry earth.
Even in the world whithout point of contact all source is by one and the earth where I walked is large and narrow, additionally it is always wrapped in the heavenly color and light.

 

Celine WU

Born in Hong Kong and moved to Japan at the age of four. Studied at an international school in Kobe, Japan and graduated from Scripps College, Claremont, CA with a BA degree in Fine Arts. Worked in LA, Hong Kong, and Tokyo in the advertising and interior fields. Also started a career as a photographer in 2003, and has worked on commission art photography for hospitality projects. Her works were featured in Photo LA and LA Art Show 2010. Her works are currently sold at Susan Spiritus Gallery, CA, USA and Kehrer Verlag, Germany.
She currently lives and works in Tokyo.
celinewu.com

Presence in between

Sunlight travels in eternity, embracing us tightly at times and tenderly at other times. At its final destination, light reveals to us the absolute beauty of shadows and at the same time creates a spiritual world between two physical entities. It is this intangible sense of presence I have attempted to capture. Hong Kong, Kobe, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, my sensibility and identity is continuously shifting back and forth between the Eastern and Western cultures to such an extent that I cannot even tell my original culture or mother tongue. This project is an ongoing journey in a quest for the identity dormant in my inner self, which is an absolute presence transcending cultural borders.

＊Printed on Japanese paper hand made by the 9th generation Living National Treasure, Master Ichibei IWANO, to enhance the naturalness and beauty of the images

 

Curated by KLEE INC PARIS TOKYO
supported by Hotel Grand Pacific LE DAIBA, SIGMA CORPORATION
Cooperation in print works by Canon Inc.