"id" exhibition at the matchbaco gallery

I'm visiting as many exhibitions as I can while in Tokyo. There are many shows to choose from.

I was drawn to the oil paintings by Mariko Matsushita 松下まり子, another young Japanese artist whose work resonated with me. She uses thick, spontaneous brush strokes in red, purple and flesh tones. Sensuality, death and memory seem to emanate from the blurred, undefined faces and often gender-less bodies of her portraits. Quite riveting at times.

I spoke briefly to Ken-ichi Nakahashi, the director of the small gallery in the shinjuku area. He will be attending my show next week.

Fléché

From the Cibachrome series, an earlier set of photographs that explored body projections.

manikins

Towards Terra Verde

I've been working on a "manikins" series of photographs since Andro moved in. I was interested in trying out image projections as well as superimposition of images onto the body. The theme for the series is that these entities abandon their current planet of habitation (whether forced to because of some cataclysm or by personal choice) and migrate to another world that will hopefully be better... some nirvana. During the voyage, they come across new worlds, experiencing feelings of nostalgia and anticipation. New vistas are projected onto their bodies — they are but an expression of the external. 

This exploration also brings up interesting questions about the make gaze, since the manikins evoke a certain degree of sensuality. Does the theory of the male gaze (the photographer's) apply to an object (the manikin)? Can an object be subjectified — in this case, is the object assuming traits similar to those of a human? Interesting... Isn't it spelled "mannequin"? Well, it seems that "manikin" is an accepted alternative spelling, which I have adopted for this series.

You may also be interested in searching the Web for Eugène Atget and Lee Friedlander, two photographers who have taken photographs of mannequins in shop window displays. Also, an introductory video to Season 5 of Mad Men, "What Is There to Love If Not the Enigma?" provides insight into the life and artwork of metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chiricho who expressed his own interested in the mannequin.

Book of skins

More and more, I'm liking the square format.

Fauve

from the Cosmochromes series

Skin on skin

Paper-thin layers of white birch caressing an imprinted body.

Taipei night market mannequin

I saw this interesting Western mannequin at the Taipei night market with her skin covered in Chinese ideograms.

Touching with the eyes

I see what I see with my eyes. I also see with an inner eye that transforms what is before me. The hand, the camera lens and my computer assist to capture and show what I really want to see.

Haptic visuality can be described as touching with the eyes. Viewing a textured or blurred image seems to make us want to reach out and touch it, explore it further. This blog explores haptic visuality, transparency and the notion of folds through digital photography.

As an artist, I am interested in capturing the body, especially in states of real or imagined transformation, evoking the real of the unreal or the unreal of the real, where darkness, transparencies and folds combine to show various forms of dynamic corporeal and psychical stases—dreamlike states lived by the sensate body in unreal worlds, experiences that shape who we are in the real world. Elements of time, memory, natural textures, rebirth and sensuality imbibe these still, intimate worlds.