Naoya Hatakeyama “Maquettes / Light”


Naoya Hatakeyama “Maquettes / Light”

Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto is pleased to announce our fifth solo exhibition with Naoya Hatakeyama entitled “Maquettes/Light”. For this exhibition, the gallery will present 20 photographs from Hatakeyama’s “Maquettes/Light” body of work including previously unreleased images, bringing a conclusion to this series. The body of work, which has already been exhibited in abbreviated form at several museums including The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama, will next be on view at “Recontres d’Arles 2009”, France from July 7th in its entirety. Hatakeyama has for years been questioning the very nature of the modern world under the theme of “urbanity”. His varied photographic series, which received incomparable recognition upon their debut, bring interrogation of the credibility of reality to the fore by mirroring the urban city and even transforming it through photography. “Maquettes/Light” duplicates the emissions of urban city lights. The work transcends the limits of “image” and proposes a new aspect of the photograph as a medium by acting in place of depicted “reality”. The exhibited series of photographs explores a new frontier within photography, and strongly engages the conceptual aspect of an image. I photographed urban city lights. When I was watching the developed print, I felt something was missing. Then, I put the print on a light box. The entire print glimmered in grey. I thought “this is not it”. I printed the same image on a transparent film, and attached it on the back side of the print. Then only the images of light were illuminated. Of course, it stands to reason, but I had never seen this reason. It is merely a tautology of reality, in which characteristics of photography, conversion and metaphor are de-legitimized. I thought that I cannot title this anything but “Maquette”. Naoya

Taka Ishii Gallery

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