Blindspot Gallery is pleased to present Fragmented Emotions exhibiting photography artworks by two of the most promising young Japanese photography artists, Cozue Takagi and Shu Ikeda.
Contemporary Japanese photogrpahy has gained increasing attention since the past decades and is acclaimed for its diversity. Cozue Takagi and Shu Ikeda are both at the forefront of such diversity in their approaches. Both artists explore new possibilities in the photographic medium to express their innermost emotions with collaged photographic artworks: Takagi employs digital manipulation, while Ikeda uses the method of paper-cutting.
Being one of the most prominent young Japanese artists, Cozue Takagi stands out for her provocative imagery and rich visual density of her works. Her method is to scan a group of negatives photographed on film and to convert the monochrome images into colored ones. The images are then digitally mixed as collages. Takagi won the 35th Kimura Ihei Memorial Photography Award this year with her most recognized ground series. The Kimura Ihei Award established in 1975 by the Asahi Shimbun Company is one of the most respected photography awards in Japan, previous recipients include Naoya Hatakeyama, Mika Ninagawa and Lieko Shiga. Takagi’s split and grain series at the exhibition are both derived from her signature ground series, a diptych that represents the artist’s state of mind in confronting, discovering and understanding the world. She made the split series by dividing each of the 2 images of ground into 9 separate pieces of image; in the grain series, Takagi took a further step in the process of decomposition, which results in a collection of images of single elements. The process of decomposition echoes her own emotional journey, in the artist’s own words: “the repeated cycle of life and death, of life being born for the dying and returning to the earth to be born again.”
In contrast to Takagi’s digital manipulation, Shu Ikeda’s artworks are handled manually by cutting and pasting. Ikeda cuts out different patterns on the photographs with a paper cutter and each artwork is a delicate creation that easily takes a few months to finish. Ikeda was formally trained as a painter. Instead of adopting painting as the sole medium in his creations, he discovers this unique method to combine painting and photography to create his artworks. Ikeda’s works are mostly ethereal images of scenery, the cutting of the image represent Ikeda’s cropping of a moment in reality; while the pasting and reconstruction of the image represents the reinvention of reality in a new shape.
Both Cozue Takagi and Shu Ikeda are audacious in pushing the limits of their visual representations, and both prominent examples of young Japanese photographers continuing to increase the diversity of contemporary Japanese photography.
About Cozue Takagi
Cozue Takagi (b. 1985) first rose to prominence in Japan’s art scene when she won the Grand Prize at Canon’s New Cosmos of Photography in 2006 during her last year of studies in Tokyo Polytechnic University. Since then Takagi’s works have been exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions across Japan and in Korea. She is the winner of the 35th Kimura Ihei Memorial Photography Award 2010, one of the most prestigious photography awards in Japan. She lives and works in Nagano, Japan.
About Shu Ikeda
Shu Ikeda (b. 1979) studied painting in Tokyo Zokei University and graduated in 2004. Since his debut solo exhibition fragmentary time in 2007, Ikeda has risen as one of Japan’s up-and-coming artists with his Honorable Mention at Canon’s New Cosmos of Photography in 2009 and winning the Mayor of Judge Prize at Tokyo Wonder Wall 2009. He works and lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Opening Reception: Thursday, 4 November 2010, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
