Kawashima was born in 1985, Miyagi prefecture. After graduating from Tokyo Polytechnic University with a master’s degree, he has been active in the field of photography including being selected for art award tokyo marunouchi 2011, won the Grand Prize at TOKYO FRONTLINE PHOTO AWARD 2012, and a participation at Unseen Photo Fair Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

In the previous exhibition “New Coast, and a Fragment Over a Women” (2013), the photographer built his own story based on the picture of the two women in the stricken area of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The photo book received the jury prize in Art division at Japan Media Arts Festival 2015.

In Kawashima’s image making process, he utilizes the fullest extent of computer and technology to let unintentional element and something like otherness come into his works. For instance, he uses Symbolic Computation System to concentrate a vast amount of photographic images and also borrows variety of images from online 3DCG database to combine.

All these experimental attempts show his cynical and humorous attitude toward photography and image processing technology, as well as swaying one’s visual experience.

This exhibition consists of mixture of photographs and a film installation of volcanic ashes taken after Mount Ontake eruption last year. This series of works refers to Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover. A collector featured in this story thinks of a collection as something incomplete and this idea, Kawashima says, somehow rhymes with his thought upon photography. Just like the collector visiting volcano to collect fragments of stones, he faces the catastrophes and tackles with regeneration of the narratives through his unique practice of photography. We are looking forward to seeing you.