Hirofumi Isoya: Raising a Gap (Itamuro Onsen Daikokuya, Nasushiobara, Tochigi)

Raising a Gap, 2005-2012, C print, Painted frame

Hirofumi Isoya: Raising a Gap (Itamuro Onsen Daikokuya, Nasushiobara, Tochigi)

August 1 - 30, 2016

Dates: August 1 (Mon.) to 30 (Tue.), 2016
Venue: Itamuro Onsen Daikokuya
Address: 856 Itamuro, Nasushiobara, Tochigi 325-0111 Japan
website: www.itamuro-daikokuya.com
To stay: Reservations available online or via phone

Artist talk: 20 to 21pm, August 18 (Thu.)
Artist in presence: August 1 and 18
Cooperation: Aoyama | Meguro

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Itamuro Onsen Daikokuya is pleased to hold “Raising a Gap,” a solo exhibition by artist Hirofumi Isoya from Monday, August 1, to Tuesday, August 30, 2016. Making his first with us, this exhibition presents 16 photographic pieces by the artist, including 4 new works.

A recurring motif of Isoya’s photographic work is a variety of physical and mechanical events, such as “an entrance door drawing an arc over accumulated snow,” “a strawberry fruit raised while being enclosed in an acrylic capsule,” and “sunlight coming through a plastic cup lying on the ground, creating unexpected diffuse reflections.”

Calling those situations of cause and effects and actions and counteractions “scenery in search of equilibrium,” Isoya looks into how fragile and ephemeral the state of things in such a process is, and how the world enduringly maintains itself with a fine balance of interrelations. In each of his ongoing long-term series of small-sized photographs, such sensibility of the artist is crystallized with a distinct atmosphere.

The series includes a number of monochrome, sepia-toned photographs, whose original colors have been intentionally reduced. Another manipulation is that one color or two that used to characterize each of the original photograph is/are now painted over part(s) of the frame that supports it. In other words, Isoya purposely separates colors from shapes in a photograph and takes out and repositions the former to form a cause-and-effect relation, so to speak, in the resultant work.

Taking this act of separation and recomposition as a way to “raise gaps,” the artist creates his photographic pieces as puzzles that, through such “gaps,” provoke thought and shake the viewer’s perception in a simple and straightforward way. It is also an act of correlating the present, to which the frame belongs as a physical object, and the past, of which the photograph captures an image, with color as the link. In such a multilayered way, Isoya attempts to insert “gaps” into stable, integrated situations.

Speaking of the series of photographs in question, the artist has also stated that it is about “attaching a photograph to the material object called frame, rather than framing a photograph.” This remark further suggests that it is not only what the photograph captures, but also its materiality itself, toward which his speculation is set.

Raising various ontological questions, Isoya’s multitiered puzzles welcome the viewer’s interactions.

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Hirofumi Isoya

Born in 1978, received a BA in Architecture and an MFA in Inter Media Arts from Tokyo University of the Arts. Subsequent to that he completed the Associate Research programme in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Through photographs, sculptures, drawings, as well as installations that combine them, he reconsiders our perception of material objects and events.
Recent exhibitions include “Time Machine,” YKG, Tokyo, 2016; “Imprisoned, Jailbreak, Imprisoned, Jailbreak," Capsule, Tokyo, 2016; “Actual Measurement,” Chika Ecoda, Nihon University College of Art, Tokyo, 2015; “The Beach That Never Was,” ICAS, Singapore, 2014; “Lag,” LISTE, Basel, 2014; “Duality of Existence,” Friedman Benda, New York, 2014; “Personal Structures,” Palazzo Bembo, Venice, 2013; “Tacit Material,” RM Gallery and Projects, Auckland, 2013; “Counting The Event,” Aoyama | Meguro, Tokyo, 2012, among others.
In 2015, three artworks by Isoya were made part of Pompidou Centre’s permanent collection.

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More Information:
http://www.itamuro-daikokuya.com/en/art/

Hirofumi Isoya web site:
http://www.whoisisoya.com/