TOKYO WOMEN / NEW REAL, NEW FICTION
Curated by SHIGEO GOTO
Artists:
MAYUMI HOSOKURA
AMI INABA
AKIKO ISOBE
YUMIKO UTSU
MANA HIRAI
YUHKI TOUYAMA
There is no other city as theatrical as Tokyo, filled with people who play their own certain roles. Even the moments separating life from death, people seem to treat these as a game. The city has changed. So also have the people’s love, truth and moral conscious. Have we become numb from catastrophe or have we evolved into detached escapists?
Women especially have undergone a metamorphosis. They can see through the lies in reality and understand the realities in myth. Within the ever-changing cityscape, ‘aging’ begins when one fixes their role. The photographs ‘age’ as well. The six female photographers being curated are those who continuously transform themselves amidst the fluctuating cityscape.
These women do not tell their life story; these women have not ‘aged.’ They have stood on the stage called Tokyo and continuously and daringly acted as various characters, even when they face difficulties. These women are not striving to become cosplayers but they do “play” through their photography.
Mayumi Hosokura continues to take photos under the theme of youth and Eros. In recent times she has focused on shooting the ‘real’ and ‘fiction’ in the Kawasaki area, which lies on the outskirts of Tokyo. The real can turn into fiction instantly, just as the fictional can become realistic – this is what Hosokura chases. By putting together large-scale prints, she hopes to create 2016’s ‘New Real’ for the exhibition. Hosokura will be at the center of the exhibition, and through their own approaches other female photographers will express the irresistible movement from the fiction to the real.
Ami Inaba and Mana Hirai strive to create their ‘new real’ from mobile phones and games that provide fictions in reality. Yumiko Utsu, who is busy raising her child while taking photography, will create a new work with dolls as a motif. Akiko Isobe, an acclaimed fashion photographer, will show how an artificial poison transforms into an energy that creates urban reality. Yuhki Touyama will bring to surface the transition from time and space to the presence by gazing into the daily life.
How will the worlds of these six young photographers be perceived by the people of China? Commonalities and differences – from there, the dialogue begins.
About Curator:
Born in 1954. Editor, Curator, Director in G/P Gallery, Professor in Kyoto University of Art and Design.
As an editor, he has been involved in the publications of various kind of artbooks and photobooks by an internationally acclaimed musician Ryuichi Sakamoto,and world-leading photographers like Nobuyoshi Araki, Mika Ninagawa, Kishin Shinoyama.
Ever since 1990s, ha has been extraordinarily active as a leader of Japanse contemporary photography. In 90s, he curated an exhibition of works by award-wining photographers Miwa Yanagi and Tomoko Sawada (Kirin KPO Plaza, Osaka) and produced a collaborative exhibition “TOKYO LOVE” by Nobuyoshi Araki and Nan Goldin, as well as publishing many books by a variety of Tokyo based photographers including Takashi Homma.
In 2008, he founded G/P gallery and has produced many exhibitions and photobooks to introduce new type of photography sprung up in Tokyo in the digital age, in his word ‘New Tokyo Photography’. As a director of G/P gallery, he has joined the world famous art fairs including Paris Photo (2008,2009), Unseen Photo Fair (2012-2015), and Photo London (2015) to represemt and introduce young Japanese talents like Daisuke Yokota, Mayumi Hosokura, Koyama Taisuke, and Takashi Kawashima to the world.
The great variety of exhibitions he curated include ‘anima on photo - hidden sense of Japanse photography’ (Amsterdam, 2014.), ‘hyper materiality on photo’(Tokyo, Lodnon, 2015.), AICHI TRIENNALE 2016 The Column Project
Trans-dimensional Photos: Images in the Future Tense（Aichi,2016）.
