5 Sept 2008 to 18 Oct 2008
Hours : Monday-Friday 10-6
YANCEY RICHARDSON GALLERY
535 West 22nd Street 3rd floor
NY 10011
New York, NY
New York
North America
p: 1 646-230-9610
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f: 1 646-230-6131
w: www.yanceyrichardson.com
Masao Yamamoto, Untitled #1515 (from Kawa = Flow), 2007 8 x 5.5 inch Gelatin Silver Print, Signed, titled, dated, editioned and stamped on verso Edition of 20
Masao Yamamoto Kawa=Flow September 5 � October 18, 2008 Project gallery exhibition: Hiroh Kikai Tokyo Labyrinth Gallery hours: Tuesday � Saturday, 10 am � 6 pm
Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present our fourth exhibition since 1996 by Japanese artist Masao Yamamoto, Kawa = Flow, The show runs concurrently with Nakazora: Space Between Sky and Earth, a solo exhibition by the artist at The Print Center, Philadelphia, on view through November 26, 2008. The gallery exhibition combines the concepts of dispersion and concentration. As Yamamoto states:
Up to now I have been working in the form of installation. What overflows from one photograph would flow into the next piece, and in two's and threes, the groups would create a combined effect, like the layered notes of an orchestra. But recently my thoughts are more focused on the individual incident - the urge to dwell deeper into each element is rising slowly. A landscape or an incident around me is cut out into a square piece of photograph. What that square piece will inspire in you... perhaps it is something that already exists inside of you.
For the exhibition, Yamamoto will devote one wall to an installation of several dozen photographs drawn from his ongoing Nakazora series. In these intentionally stained and worn photographs, Yamamoto explores notions of memory and the passage of time. Arriving at the gallery bundled in worn leather suitcases and small enough to hold in the palm of your hand or carry in your pocket, the work is an anachronism, belonging to a sensibility that contrasts vividly with the large-scale color photographs prevalent today. Functioning like words or phrases in what Yamamoto considers his �dictionary�, the unframed photographs are attached directly to the gallery wall in a loose constellation where the white space comes forward as an equal visual element in the composition.
The balance of the gallery will feature a carefully considered selection of slightly larger framed photographs, measuring approximately 5 x 8 inches. These new works mark a subtle departure from Yamamoto�s earlier series. Each one presenting a contained world of natural beauty, they are intended to be seen and contemplated singularly as opposed to in groups. Each image recalls a fleeting, transitory moment: the crest of a breaking wave, the gaze of an eagle, a ball suspended in mid-air. Yamamoto�s images speak softly with an intimacy that draws the viewer near to explore each piece at close range. Rather than telling a story or describing a scene, the work evokes a moment of heightened awareness, of looking with quiet intensity at the world.
Yamamoto has produced five books published by Nazraeli Press: A Box of Ku, �, Nahazora, Omizuao, and The Path of Green Leaves. His work has been exhibited internationally at the Centro per l�Arte Contemporanea, Rome, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the Galeria d�Arte Moderna di Bologna, the High Museum, Atlanta, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The work of Masao Yamamoto is held in the collections of Harvard University Art Museums; Museum Contemporary of Photography, Chicago; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The International Center of Photography; Center for Creative Photography; Princeton University Art Museum; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Portland Art Museum.
Hiroh Kikai Tokyo Labyrinth September 5 � October 18, 2008 Gallery hours: Tuesday � Saturday 10 am � 6pm
Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present Tokyo Labyrinth, Hiroh Kikai�s debut solo exhibition in the United States. Currently featured in the exhibition Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan at New York�s International Center of Photography, this is the first presentation of work from Tokyo Labyrinth, his thirty-year photographic exploration of that city�s urban landscape. Comprised of photographs made between 1976 and 1989 in the suburbs and old downtown of Tokyo, the exhibition reveals a relationship to documentary photographers ranging from Eugene Atget to the New Topographics photographers of the 1970s.
Trained as a philosopher, Kikai turned to photography after encountering the work of Diane Arbus and Walker Evans. From the beginning of his career in 1976, Kikai has focused on two parallel bodies of work in his adopted city of Tokyo: Persona, a series of portraits of individuals encountered in the Asakusa district; and Tokyo Labyrinth, a portrait of the city itself in all its surreal and complicated geometry. Kikai poses his subjects against a blank wall in order to let their individual personalities reveal themselves without being informed by the environment; in Tokyo Labyrinth, he has chosen to photograph the urban landscape without the presence of its inhabitants. �If a portrait�is a way to grasp the interiority of a person, the same thing should be able to be embodied in the landscape�I should be able to illustrate the smells seeping out from people�s lives.�
In both Tokyo Labyrinth and Persona, Kikai has worked within certain self-imposed limitations. The artist explains, �The rule I adopted for Tokyo Labyrinth is to use only standard lenses on a medium format camera with black-and-white film. I thought I wouldn�t be able to impress my scent on these cityscapes without such constraints.�
Kikai�s images combine a careful description of place with elegant abstraction; windows, laundry, pipes and telephone lines are reduced to lines and planes. Regardless of the rigor of his compositions, Kikai is essentially a humanist who is interested in people and how they live. He describes his work as asking the question, �What does it mean to be human?� Kikai�s images describe with affection the details of human existence in one of the most cramped cities on earth, expressing the eloquence of the commonplace found in the side streets and back alleys of modest neighborhoods with formal precision and an eye for the surreal. With an economy of means, Kikai�s work projects honesty and a deep respect for the evidence of time and humanity.
Hiroh Kikai�s work is the subject of seven books, among them the 1999 publication Tokyo Labyrinth. A major monograph, Hiroh Kikai, was published by Steidl this month. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Neue National Galerie, Berlin; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan; and Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona.
KUNST HALLE SANKT GALLEN presents David Renggli - Scaramouche
17 August - 27 October 2013
David Renggli - in some respects a prodigy of the Swiss art scene - has repeatedly aroused the curiosity of the public for more than ten years thanks to a unique mixture of themes and forms, of spectacle, humour and poetry.
The Showroom, London presents Ricardo Basbaum: re-projecting (london)
12 July - 17 August 2013
The Showroom is delighted to present re-projecting (london), a major new commission by Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum, and the first significant presentation of his internationally renowned artwork in the UK.
